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Co-ge-we-a, The Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range is a 1927 Western romance novel by Mourning Dove, also known as Hum-Ishu-Ma, or Christine Quintasket (Okanogan and Arrow Lakes). It is one of the earliest novels written by an indigenous woman from the Plateau region. The novel includes the first example of Native American literary criticism.Cogewea, the eponymous protagonist, is a woman of mixed-race ancestry, both Indigenous and Euro-American, who feels caught between her two worlds. She works on the ranch of her sister and white brother-in-law in Montana, where she is respected for her talents and skills. A European American from the East, Alfred Densmore, joins the ranch as an inexperienced ranch-hand. Cogewea is torn between the world of her white father and that of her Okanagan (spelled "Okanogan" in the novel) grandmother, Stemteema.Her work was supported by editor Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, an American anthropologist and activist for Native Americans. He threatened the publishing company, Four Seas Press, in order to get the novel published.Controversy has developed over McWhorter's influence over and changes in the novel. While some scholars believe his edits were typical for the genre and his time, others consider McWhorter to be a second author of the novel. McWhorter denied having that large a role.When the book was first published, audiences found the novel's style awkward. Mourning Dove was accused by one US Indian agent of falsely claiming that she written the novel. After receiving McWhorter wrote to him strongly supporting Mourning Dove's authorship, the agent recanted his statements. Over her lifetime, Mourning Dove gained both notoriety and respect as an author. It was not until the late 20th century that Cogewea gained scholarly attention, following a revival of interest in women's and indigenous people's works.Since that time, scholarship has focused on the infusion in Cogewea of Western tropes with Native American storytelling. In the novel, Alfred Densmore attempts to steal land and money he believes Cogewea possesses (she doesn't), and ends up abusing her when he finds out she is poor. Scholars agree that this plot line is a re-writing of the Silyx Okanagan oral story of Chipmunk and Owl Woman, where Owl Woman is the devourer and Chipmunk barely survives her encounter. Chipmunk is the meaning of Cogewea's name (Okanagan). Jeannette Armstrong, a First Nations woman who claims to be a grand-niece of Mourning Dove, says that the author had a "masterful knowledge of what Okanagan oral story is and how it works".Recent scholarship has also recognized the novel as a work of Indigenous empowerment. (wikipedia.org)

The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life is a 1915 novel by Sinclair Lewis.The story follows the life of Carl Ericson as he grows up and matures. He has to face the choice of either going to his town college, to a private school with a childhood friend, or live in the wilderness with his older friend, who had a cottage in the middle of the forest. (wikipedia.org)About the author: Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 - January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." He is best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).His works are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism in the interwar period. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds." Compared to his contemporaries, Lewis's reputation suffered a precipitous decline among literary scholars throughout the 20th century. Despite his enormous popularity during the 1920s, by the 21st century most of his works had been eclipsed in prominence by other writers with less commercial success during the same time period, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.Since the 2010s there has been renewed interest in Lewis's work, in particular his 1935 dystopian satire It Can't Happen Here. In the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, It Can't Happen Here surged to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling books. Scholars have found eerie parallels in his novels to the COVID-19 crisis, and to the rise of Donald Trump.He has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a postage stamp in the Great Americans series. (wikipedia.org)

Sex and Repression in Savage Society is a 1927 book by anthropologist Bronis¿aw Malinowski. It is considered "a famous critique of psychoanalysis, arguing that the 'Oedipus complex' described by Freud is not universal." Malinowski gives a partial explanation of the role of sex in social organization through the synthesis of psychoanalysis and anthropology, considered competing academic disciplines at the time. The book is considered an important contribution to psychoanalysis, which Malinowski acknowledged was a "popular craze of the day."I have never been in any sense a follower of psycho-analytic practice, or an adherent of psycho-analytic theory; and now, while impatient of the exorbitant claims of psycho-analysis, of its chaotic arguments and tangled terminology, I must yet acknowledge a deep sense of indebtedness to it for stimulation as well for valuable instruction in some aspects of human psychology.The book is divided into four parts. In Part 1 (The Formation of a Complex), he lays out the issues related to childhood sexuality through puberty and maternal roles. In Part 2 (The Mirror of Tradition) he examines myth and taboo related to family dynamics. In Part 3 (Psycho-analysis and Anthropology), he examines the rift between the two disciplines and looks at the role parricide may have as a foundation of culture. In Part 4 (Instinct and Culture), he examines how humans made the transition from animalistic instincts to organized society, situating the family as "the cradle of nascent culture." He describes how taboos that develop within a society must then be enforced through authority and repression.Malinowski's studies of the Trobriand islanders challenged the Freudian proposal that psychosexual development (e.g. the Oedipus complex) was universal. He reported that in the insular matriarchal society of the Trobriand, boys are disciplined by their maternal uncles, not their fathers; impartial, avuncular discipline. Malinowski reported that boys dreamed of feared uncles, not of beloved fathers, thus, power - not sexual jealousy - is the source of Oedipal conflict in such non-Western societies.In a brief passage in his 1979 book Broca's Brain, the late science populariser Carl Sagan criticised Malinowski for thinking that "he had discovered a people in the Trobriand Islands who had not worked out the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth", arguing that it was more likely that the islanders were simply making fun of Malinowski. Mark Mosko wrote in 2014 that further research on Trobriand people affirmed some of Malinowski's claims about their beliefs on procreation, adding that the dogmas are tied to a complicated system of belief encapsulating magic into beliefs about human and plant procreation, but he also stated that "the preponderance of ethnographic evidence ... refutes Malinowski's notorious claims of Islanders' supposed "ignorance of physiological paternity"". (wikipedia.org)

Whose Body? is a 1923 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers. It was her debut novel, and the book in which she introduced the character of Lord Peter Wimsey. In their review of crime novels (revised edn 1989), the US writers Barzun and Taylor call Whose Body? "a stunning first novel that disclosed the advent of a new star in the firmament, and one of the first magnitude. The episode of the bum in the bathtub, the character (and the name) of Sir Julian Freke, the detection, and the possibilities in Peter Wimsey are so many signs of genius about to erupt. Peter alone suffers from fatuousness overdone, a period fault that Sayers soon blotted out".A. N. Wilson, writing in 1993, noted that "The publisher made [Sayers] tone the story down, but the plot depends on Lord Peter being clever enough to spot that the body, uncircumcised, is not that of a Jew". In the 1923 text, Parker says that the body in the bath could not be Sir Reuben Levy because "Sir Reuben is a pious Jew of pious parents, and the chap in the bath obviously isn't ..." Later versions replaced this with "But as a matter of fact, the man in the bath is no more Sir Reuben Levy than Adolf Beck, poor devil, was John Smith".In her introduction to Hodder & Stoughton's 2016 reprint, Laura Wilson notes that Wimsey, conceived as a caricature of the gifted amateur sleuth, owes something to P. G. Wodehouse, whose Bertie Wooster had made his first appearance some years earlier. Sayers said of Wimsey that "at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure to spend his fortune for him. When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. ... I can heartily recommend this inexpensive way of furnishing to all who are discontented with their incomes".In his 2017 overview of the classic crime genre, Martin Edwards notes that Lord Peter Wimsey began his life as a fantasy figure, created "as a conscious act of escapism by young writer who was short of money and experiencing one unsatisfactory love affair after another". (wikipedia.org) About the author:Dorothy Leigh Sayers (13 June 1893 - 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Sayers was considered one of its four "Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.Sayers is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays. She considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. Sayers's obituarist, writing in The New York Times in 1957, noted that many critics at the time regarded her mystery The Nine Tailors as her finest literary achievement. (wikipedia.org)

George Samuel Clason (November 7, 1874 - April 5, 1957) was an American author. He is most often associated with his book The Richest Man in Babylon which was first published in 1926.Clason started two companies, the Clason Map Company of Denver, Colorado and the Clason Publishing Company. The Clason Map Company was the first to publish a road atlas of the United States and Canada, but did not survive the Great Depression.Clason is best known for writing a series of informational pamphlets about being thrifty and how to achieve financial success. He started writing the pamphlets in 1926, using parables that were set in ancient Babylon. Banks and insurance companies began to distribute the parables, and the most famous ones were compiled into the book The Richest Man in Babylon - The Success Secrets of the Ancients. He is credited with coining the phrase, "Pay yourself first". (wikipedia.org)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in June 1926 in the United Kingdom by William Collins, Sons and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company. It is the third novel to feature Hercule Poirot as the lead detective.Poirot retires to a village near the home of a friend, Roger Ackroyd, to pursue a project to perfect vegetable marrows. Soon after, Ackroyd is murdered and Poirot must come out of retirement to solve the case.The novel was well-received from its first publication. In 2013, the British Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever. It is one of Christie's best known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. Howard Haycraft included it in his list of the most influential crime novels ever written. The short biography of Christie which is included in 21st century UK printings of her books calls it her masterpiece. (wikipedia.org)Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 - 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which was performed in the West End from 1952 to 2020, as well as six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies. Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published. Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child before divorcing in 1928. During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the poisons which featured in many of her novels, short stories, and plays. Following her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, she spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East and used her first-hand knowledge of his profession in her fiction. According to Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author. And Then There Were None is one of the highest-selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million sales. Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for the longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End of London on 25 November 1952, and by September 2018 there had been more than 27,500 performances. The play was closed down in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play. In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers' Association. In September 2015, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate. Most of Christie's books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels. More than thirty feature films are based on her work. (wikipedia.org)

Smoky the Cowhorse is a novel by Will James that was the winner of the 1927 Newbery Medal.The story details the life of a horse in the western United States from his birth to his eventual decline. It takes place after the 1910, during which the West dies away and automobiles are introduced. Smoky is born in the wild but is captured and trained by a cowboy named Clint. Clint is taken by Smoky's intelligence and spirit, and he uses him as his personal steed. Under his guidance, Smoky soon becomes known as the best cow horse around. However, Smoky is among a number of horses stolen by a horse thief. When Smoky refuses to allow the thief to ride him, being loyal only to Clint, he is beaten repeatedly in punishment. Developing an intense hatred for humans from this treatment, Smoky eventually attacks and kills the thief.When Smoky is eventually captured by local authorities, his now violent and aggressive demeanor prompts his use as a bucking bronco at a rodeo. Under the moniker of "The Cougar", he becomes the most famous rodeo attraction in the South West, and people come from miles away to attempt to ride him. Years of performing at the rodeo eventually take their toll on his body and spirit, and he is left a shell of his former self.As he is no longer of any use as a rodeo horse, he is renamed "Cloudy" and used as a riding horse, then later sold to an abusive man who starves him. During this time, Clint finally reunites with Smoky. While in town on business, Clint spots and recognizes the horse. After having Smoky's current owner arrested for his acts of cruelty, Clint reclaims him and takes him home with him. Although Clint initially despairs at the condition Smoky is in, his careful treatment of the horse begins to show results. In the end, Smoky has completely recovered his former health and personality.The novel has been adapted to the screen three times as Smoky, in 1933, 1946, and 1966. Will James himself appears in the 1933 film as a narrator.Will James expressed surprise at winning the Newbery Medal for Smoky the Cowhorse, since the book was published for adults. An illustrated edition of Smoky the Cowhorse was issued in 1928.James loosely based the book on his first horse, Smoky, who was born in the Huff's cabin, near Val Marie, Saskatchewan, where James learned wrangling and lived for three years before moving to the United States.In the 1982 film Tex, lead character Tex McCormick refers to Smoky the Cowhorse as his favorite book.Thomas Schelling said the most influential book he ever read was Smoky the Cowhorse. "He'd say it was the first time he understood empathy for other human beings". (wikipedia.org)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 - March 15, 1937) was an American writer of weird and horror fiction, who is known for his creation of what became the Cthulhu Mythos.Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. He was born into affluence, but his family's wealth dissipated soon after the death of his grandfather. In 1913, he wrote a critical letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction. During the interwar period, he wrote and published stories that focused on his interpretation of humanity's place in the universe. In his view, humanity was an unimportant part of an uncaring cosmos that could be swept away at any moment. These stories also included fantastic elements that represented the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism.Lovecraft was at the center of a wider body of authors known as "The Lovecraft Circle." This group wrote stories that frequently shared details among them. He was also a prolific letter writer. He maintained a correspondence with several different authors and literary proteges. According to some estimates, he wrote approximately 100,000 letters over the course of his life. In these letters, he discussed his worldview and his daily life, and tutored younger authors, such as August Derleth, Donald Wandrei, and Robert Bloch.Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as an author and editor. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty at the age of 46, but is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. Among his most celebrated tales are "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Rats in the Walls", At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time. His writings form the basis of the Cthulhu Mythos, which has inspired a large body of pastiches across several mediums drawing on Lovecraft's characters, setting and themes, constituting a wider subgenre known as Lovecraftian horror. (wikipedia.org)

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers is a 1926 book by Will Durant, in which he profiles several prominent Western philosophers and their ideas, beginning with Socrates and Plato and on through Friedrich Nietzsche. Durant attempts to show the interconnection of their ideas and how one philosopher's ideas informed the next.There are nine chapters each focused on one philosopher, and two more chapters each containing briefer profiles of three early 20th century philosophers.The book was published in 1926, with a revised second edition released in 1933. The work was preceded by a number of pamphlets in the Little Blue Books series of inexpensive worker education pamphlets. They proved so popular they were assembled into a single book and published in hardcover form by Simon & Schuster in 1926.Philosophers profiled are, in order: Plato (with a section on Socrates), Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Baruch Spinoza (with a section on Descartes), Voltaire (with a section on Rousseau), Immanuel Kant (with a section on Hegel), Arthur Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, and Friedrich Nietzsche.The final two chapters are devoted to European and then American philosophers. Henri Bergson, Benedetto Croce, and Bertrand Russell are covered in the tenth, and George Santayana, William James, and John Dewey are covered in the eleventh.In a foreword to the readers in the second edition of the book, Durant expresses his acknowledgement for the criticism that the book received as to how it does not include philosophers from the Asian continent, most notably Confucius, Buddha and Adi Shankara.This work is the source of the popular quote, typically misattributed to Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." The phrase was originated by Durant when discussing Aristotle's work. (wikipedia.org)About the author:William James Durant (November 5, 1885 - November 7, 1981) was an American writer, historian, and philosopher. He became best known for his work, The Story of Civilization, which contains 11 volumes and details the history of eastern and western civilizations. It was written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel Durant, and published between 1935 and 1975. He was earlier noted for The Story of Philosophy (1926), described as "a groundbreaking work that helped to popularize philosophy".Durant conceived of philosophy as total perspective or seeing things sub specie totius (i.e., "from the perspective of the whole")-a phrase inspired by Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis, roughly meaning "from the perspective of the eternal". He sought to unify and humanize the great body of historical knowledge, which had grown voluminous and become fragmented into esoteric specialties, and to vitalize it for contemporary application. As a result of their success, he and his wife were jointly awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. ...(wikipedia.org)

The Blessing Pan is one of those ambiguously fantastic novels in which it's never quite clear whether the magic is taking place in reality or in the minds of the characters. Elderick Anwrel, a nineteenth-century Anglican priest, finds that his parishioners have started to worship Pan, Greek god of shepherds. His struggle to win them back to the fold forms an epic novel of spiritual warfare.Lord Dunsany's writing is dense and rich, and readers used to contemporary fantasy may find The Blessing of Pan very slow-paced. The 'action' is definitely more metaphysical and mental than physical- Anwrel's struggle with Pan takes place mainly in agonised conversations and soul-searching. But it's definitely a very rewarding book to the persevering reader.An ambivalent, thought-provoking story about the needs of community versus individual conscience, industrialisation versus the wilderness and faith versus cynicism. (Eleanor Toland) About the author:Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (24 July 1878 - 25 October 1957, usually Lord Dunsany) was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist. Over 90 volumes of fiction, essays, poems and plays appeared in his lifetime. He gained a name in the 1910s as a great writer in the English-speaking world. Best known today are the 1924 fantasy novel, The King of Elfland's Daughter, and his first book, The Gods of Peg¿na, which depicts a fictional pantheon. Many critics feel his early work laid the grounds for the fantasy genre. Born in London as heir to an old Irish peerage, he was raised partly in Kent, but later lived mainly at Ireland's possibly longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara. He worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory supporting the Abbey Theatre and some fellow writers. He was a chess and pistol champion of Ireland, and travelled and hunted. He devised an asymmetrical game called Dunsany's chess. In later life, he gained an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin. He retired to Shoreham, Kent in 1947. In 1957 he took ill when visiting Ireland and died in Dublin of appendicitis. Dunsany was a prolific writer of short stories, novels, plays, poetry, essays and autobiography. He published over 90 books in his lifetime, not including individual plays. Books have continued to appear, with more than 120 having been issued by 2017. Dunsany's works have been published in many languages. The then Edward Plunkett began his literary career in the late 1890s with published verses such as "Rhymes from a Suburb" and "The Spirit of the Bog", but he made a lasting impression in 1905. Writing as Lord Dunsany he produced the well-received collection The Gods of Peg¿na. Dunsany's most notable fantasy short stories appeared in collections from 1905 to 1919, before fantasy had been recognised as a distinct genre. He paid for the publication of the first collection, The Gods of Peg¿na, earning a commission on sales. This he never again had to do.The stories in his first two books, and perhaps the beginning of his third, were set in an invented world, Peg¿na, with its own gods, history and geography. Starting with this, Dunsany's name is linked to that of Sidney Sime, his chosen artist, who illustrated much of his work, notably up to 1922. ...(wikipedia.org)

Vladimir Nabokov's debut novel, Mary, is a well written story about a youthful love. Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899 - 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian (1926-1938) while living in Berlin, where he met his wife. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945 and lived mostly on the East Coast before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.From 1948 to 1959, Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University.Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita ranked fourth on Modern Library's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in 2007 and is considered one of the greatest 20th-century works of literature. Nabokov's Pale Fire, published in 1962, was ranked 53rd on the same list. His memoir, Speak, Memory, published in 1951, is considered among the greatest nonfiction works of the 20th century, placing eighth on Random House's ranking of 20th century works. Nabokov was a seven-time finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. He also was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems.... Nabokov is known as one of the leading prose stylists of the 20th century; his first writings were in Russian, but he achieved his greatest fame with the novels he wrote in English. As a trilingual (also writing in French, see Mademoiselle O) master, he has been compared to Joseph Conrad, but Nabokov disliked both the comparison and Conrad's work. He lamented to the critic Edmund Wilson, "I am too old to change Conradically"-which John Updike later called "itself a jest of genius". This lament came in 1941, when Nabokov had been an apprentice American for less than one year. Later, in a November 1950 letter to Wilson, Nabokov offers a solid, non-comic appraisal: "Conrad knew how to handle readymade English better than I; but I know better the other kind. He never sinks to the depths of my solecisms, but neither does he scale my verbal peaks." Nabokov translated many of his own early works into English, sometimes in collaboration with his son, Dmitri. His trilingual upbringing had a profound influence on his art. ...(wikipedia.org)

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (13 July [O.S. 1 July] 1894 - 27 January 1940) was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry." Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January 1940.Red CavalryIn 1920, Babel was assigned to Komandarm (Army Commander) Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, witnessing a military campaign of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. He documented the horrors of the war he witnessed in the 1920 Diary (¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ 1920 ¿¿¿¿, Konarmeyskiy Dnevnik 1920 Goda), which he later used to write Red Cavalry (¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, Konarmiya), a collection of short stories such as "Crossing the River Zbrucz" and "My First Goose". The horrific violence of Red Cavalry seemed to harshly contrast the gentle nature of Babel himself.Babel wrote: "Only by 1923 I have learned how to express my thoughts in a clear and not very lengthy way. Then I returned to writing." Several stories that were later included in Red Cavalry were published in Vladimir Mayakovsky's LEF ("¿¿¿") magazine in 1924. Babel's honest description of the brutal realities of war, far from revolutionary propaganda, earned him some powerful enemies. According to recent research, Marshal Budyonny was infuriated by Babel's unvarnished descriptions of marauding Red Cossacks and demanded Babel's execution without success. However, Gorky's influence not only protected Babel but also helped to guarantee publication. In 1929 Red Cavalry was translated into English by J. Harland and later was translated into a number of other languages.Argentine author and essayist Jorge Luis Borges once wrote of Red Cavalry,The music of its style contrasts with the almost ineffable brutality of certain scenes. One of the stories-"Salt"-enjoys a glory seemingly reserved for poems and rarely attained by prose: many people know it by heart. (wikipedia.org)

Oil! is a novel by Upton Sinclair, first published in 1926-27 and told as a third-person narrative, with only the opening pages written in the first person. The book was written in the context of the Harding administration's Teapot Dome Scandal and takes place in Southern California. It is a social and political satire skewering the human foibles of all its characters.The main character is James Arnold Ross Jr., nicknamed Bunny, son of an oil tycoon. Bunny's sympathetic feelings toward oilfield workers and socialists provoke arguments with his father throughout the story.The novel served as a loose inspiration for the 2007 film There Will Be Blood. James Arnold "Dad" Ross and his son, James Jr. ("Bunny") are introduced as they drive through southern California to meet with the Watkins family, who are leasing out some oil property they own. They find out that the family is deadlocked about how the properties and proceeds should be divided. While Dad and Bunny go quail hunting on the Watkins' goat ranch, they find oil. At Bunny's urging, Dad tries to prevent the elder Watkins from beating his daughter Ruth, trying to convince them that he has received a "third revelation" which prohibits parents from beating their children. The plan backfires when Eli, Ruth's brother, interjects himself into the discussion and claims that he has received the revelation.As drilling begins at the Watkins ranch, Bunny begins to realize his father's business methods are not entirely ethical. After a worker is killed in an accident and an oil well is destroyed in a blowout, Dad's workforce goes on strike. Bunny is torn between loyalty to Dad and his friendship to Ruth and her rebellious brother Paul, who support the workers. Paul is drafted into World War I and, when the conflict is over, remains in Siberia to fight the rising Bolsheviks. Back home, Bunny enrolls in college, and he becomes increasingly involved with socialism through a classmate, Rachel Menzies. Paul returns home and tells of his travels, explaining he has become a communist.Bunny accompanies Dad to the seaside mansion of his business associate Vernon Roscoe. Dad and Roscoe flee the country to avoid being subpoenaed by Congress in the Teapot Dome scandal. Before Dad goes away, Bunny proposes parting ways with his father and earning his own way in the world; Dad is confused and hurt, but not unsupportive. Overseas, Dad meets and marries Mrs. Olivier, a widow and Spiritualist, but soon passes away from pneumonia. Bunny decides to dedicate his life and inheritance to social justice while Roscoe moves to get control of the bulk of Dad's estate. Bunny and his sister Bertie are swindled out of most of their inheritance by Roscoe and Mrs. Olivier.Bunny marries Rachel and they dedicate themselves to establishing a socialist institution of learning; Eli, by now a successful evangelist, falsely claims that Paul underwent a deathbed conversion to Christianity. (wikipedia.org)

Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman is a novel by English writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, her first, published in 1926. It has been described as an early feminist classic."Lolly" is the version of Laura's name used by her family after a mispronunciation by a young niece. She comes to dislike being called "Aunt Lolly" and to see the name as a symbol of her lack of independence. "The Loving Huntsman" refers to Satan, whom Laura envisions as hunting souls in a kindly way.Lolly Willowes is a satirical comedy of manners incorporating elements of fantasy. It is the story of a middle-aged spinster who moves to a country village to escape her controlling relatives and takes up the practice of witchcraft. The novel opens at the turn of the twentieth century, with Laura Willowes moving from Somerset to London to live with her brother Henry and his family. The move comes in the wake of the death of Laura's father, Everard, with whom she lived at the family home, Lady Place. Laura's other brother, James, moves into Lady Place with his wife and his young son, Titus, with the intention to continue the family's brewing business. However, James dies suddenly of a heart attack and Lady Place is rented out, with the view that Titus, once grown up, will return to the home and run the business.After twenty years of being a live-in aunt Laura finds herself feeling increasingly stifled both by her obligations to the family and by living in London. When shopping for flowers on the Moscow Road, Laura decides she wishes to move to the Chiltern Hills and, buying a guide book and map to the area, she picks the village of Great Mop as her new home. Against the wishes of her extended family, Laura moves to Great Mop and finds herself entranced and overwhelmed by the chalk hills and beech woods. Though sometimes disturbed by strange noises at night, she settles in and befriends her landlady and a poultry farmer.After a while, Titus decides to move from his lodgings in Bloomsbury to Great Mop and be a writer, rather than managing the family business. Titus's renewed social and domestic reliance on Laura make her feel frustrated that even living in the Chilterns she cannot escape the duties expected of women. When out walking, she makes a pact with a force that she takes to be Satan, to be free from such duties. On returning to her lodgings, she discovers a kitten, whom she takes to be Satan's emissary, and names him Vinegar, in reference to an old picture of witches' familiars. Subsequently, her landlady takes her to a Witches' Sabbath attended by many of the villagers.Titus is plagued with misadventures, such as having his milk constantly curdle and falling into a nest of wasps. Finally, he proposes marriage to a London visitor, Pandora Williams, who has treated his wasp stings, and the two retreat to London. Laura, relieved, meets Satan at Mulgrave Folly and tells him that women are like 'sticks of dynamite' waiting to explode and that all women are witches even 'if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they know it's there - ready!' The novel ends with Laura acknowledging that her new freedom comes at the expense of knowing that she belongs to the 'satisfied but profound indifferent ownership' of Satan.The novel was well received by critics on its publication. In France it was shortlisted for the Prix Femina and in the USA it was the very first Book Of The Month for the Book Club.Until the 1960s, the manuscript of Lolly Willowes was displayed in the New York Public Library.In 2014, Robert McCrum chose it as one of the 100 Best Novels in English, for his list for The Guardian. (wikipedia.org)

FOREWORDHelen Keller is loved the world over. Her accomplishments in the face of unique difficulties have stirred our sense of the heroic; her patient struggle and convincing triumph touch our hearts. No one can appreciate the secret of her growth without some knowledge of her spiritual background. To her, religion is a way of living day by day. In her view, spiritual life is as real and as practical as natural life. Her Christianity is built on the gospel of love.Miss Keller is often questioned in public about her religion. She answers briefly, but always longs to say more. And so, when asked to write a book about her religion, she welcomed the opportunity to tell her many friends just what her religious ideals are and where she found them. It has been a labour of love, and she has poured her soul into it, not to argue a point, but to share with others what is of inestimable value to her.Here is a mind kept singularly pure from childhood; here is a religious experience unhampered by the blindness of any sectarianism; here is a spiritual insight, a gift of perception, undulled by absorption in the things of sense life. Here is one in whom the Lord has worked a miracle, and she declares to us "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see."Paul SperryAbout the author:Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 - June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled, and was outspoken in her anti-war convictions. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other radical left causes. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1971. The Story of My Life, first published in 1903, is Helen Keller's autobiography detailing her early life, especially her experiences with Anne Sullivan.[1] Portions of it were adapted by William Gibson for a 1957 Playhouse 90 production, a 1959 Broadway play, a 1962 Hollywood feature film, and the Indian film Black. The book is dedicated to inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The dedication reads, "To ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL Who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies, I dedicate this Story of My Life." (wikipedia.org)

On the spiritual path? This book is for you.The book chronicles a journey of enlightenment with the masters of the far East, it is immensely profound and details the path to awakening. (Kay Bartholomew)About the author: Baird Thomas Spalding (1872-1953) was an American spiritual writer, author of the spiritual book series: Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East.In 1924, Spalding published the first volume of Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East. It describes the travels to India and Tibet of a research party of eleven scientists in 1894. During their trip they claim to have made contact with "the Great Masters of the Himalayas", immortal beings with whom they lived and studied, gaining insight into their lives and spiritual message. This close contact enabled them to witness many of the spiritual principles evinced by these Great Masters translated into their everyday lives, which Spalding describes as acts that can be accomplished by anyone who comes to know his "TRUE" self. Such examples are walking on water, or manifesting bread to feed the hungry party. Despite most of the action taking place in India, the Great Masters make it clear that the greatest embodiment of the Enlightened state is that of the Christ - the discovery of man's source of power within himself - that light of God - the Christ consciousness is that "Christ" state: The Masters accept that Buddha represents the Way to Enlightenment, but they clearly set forth that the Christ Consciousness is Enlightenment, or a state of consciousness for which we are all seeking - the Christ light of every individual; therefore, the light of every child born into the world.Spalding published three additional volumes before his death in 1953. Volumes 5 and 6 were published by DeVorss & Co posthumously from various articles that Spalding had written.Spalding's books have remained in print since his death and his stories have helped to popularize the concept of Ascended Masters which became a common meme in New Age and alternative religious movements during the later twentieth century.During the 1920s, Spalding was a personal acquaintance of Guy Ballard, also a mining engineer and founder of the I AM activity. Similar themes to Spalding can be seen in Ascended Master groups such as the Church Universal and Triumphant and the writings of Elizabeth Clare Prophet. Spalding is named as an influence in the writings of New Age figures such as JZ Knight, Paul Baumann of the Methernitha sect and Father Divine.The growth of the New Age movement during the 1970s resulted in a renewal of interest in Spalding, and several New Age figures have claimed tenuous connections to him after his death. American mystic Thane of Hawaii, founder of the Prosperos group, claimed in 1974 to have ghost-written several of Spalding's later books and accompanied him on his 1935 India tour. (wikipedia.org)

Elmer Gantry is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 that presents aspects of the religious activity of America in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s public toward it. The novel's protagonist, the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, is initially attracted by booze and easy money (though he eventually renounces tobacco and alcohol) and chasing women. After various forays into evangelism, he becomes a successful Methodist minister despite his hypocrisy and serial sexual indiscretions.Elmer Gantry was first published in the United States by Harcourt Trade Publishers in March 1927, dedicated by Lewis to the American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken. The novel tells the story of a young, narcissistic, womanizing college athlete who abandons his early ambition to become a lawyer. The legal profession does not suit the unethical Gantry. After college, he attends a Baptist seminary and is ordained as a Baptist minister. While managing to cover up certain sexual indiscretions, he is thrown out of the seminary before completing his BD because he is too drunk to turn up at a church where he is supposed to preach. After several years as a travelling salesman of farm equipment, he becomes manager for Sharon Falconer, an itinerant evangelist. Gantry becomes her lover, but loses both her and his position when she is killed in a fire at her new tabernacle. After this catastrophe, he briefly acts as a "New Thought" evangelist, and eventually becomes a Methodist minister. He marries well and eventually obtains a large congregation in Lewis's fictional Midwestern city of Zenith. During his career, Gantry contributes to the downfall, physical injury, and even death of key people around him, including a sincere minister, Frank Shallard, who is plagued by doubt. Especially ironic is the way he champions love, an emotion he seems incapable of, in his sermons, preaches against ambition, when he himself is so patently ambitious, and organizes crusades against (mainly sexual) immorality, when he has difficulty resisting sexual temptation himself. On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the United States. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. Evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort".However, the book was a commercial success. It was the best-selling work of fiction in America for the year 1927, according to Publishers Weekly.Mark Schorer, then of the University of California, Berkeley, notes: "The forces of social good and enlightenment as presented in Elmer Gantry are not strong enough to offer any real resistance to the forces of social evil and banality." Schorer also says that, while researching the book, Lewis attended two or three church services every Sunday while in Kansas City, and that: "He took advantage of every possible tangential experience in the religious community." The result is a novel that satirically represents the religious activity of America in evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the 1920s toward it.Shortly after the publication of Elmer Gantry, H. G. Wells published a widely syndicated newspaper article called "The New American People", in which he largely based his observations of American culture on Lewis' novels.Elmer Gantry appears as a minor character in two later, lesser-known Lewis novels: The Man Who Knew Coolidge and Gideon Planish. George Babbitt, the namesake of one of Lewis' best-known novels, appears in Elmer Gantry very briefly during an encounter at the Zenith Athletic Club. (wikipedia.org)

"Diary of a Madman", also translated as "A Madman's Diary" is a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun, published in 1918. It was the first and most influential work written in vernacular Chinese in republican era China, and would become a cornerstone of the New Culture Movement. Lu Xun's stories often critiqued early 20th century Chinese society, and "Diary of a Madman" established a new language and revolutionary figure of Chinese literature, an attempt to challenge conventional thinking and traditional understanding.The diary form and the idea of the madman who sees reality more clearly than those around him were inspired by Nikolai Gogol's short story "Diary of a Madman". Lu Xun's "madman" sees "cannibalism" both in his family and the village around him, and he then finds cannibalism in the Confucian classics which had long been credited with a humanistic concern for the mutual obligations of society, and thus used to justify the superiority of Confucian civilization. The story can be read as an sardonic attack on traditional Chinese culture and society and a call for a new culture."Diary of a Madman" is the opening story in Lu Xun's first collection, and has often been referred to as "China's first modern short story". It was only the second modern vernacular Chinese story, after Chen Hengzhe's "One Day". It was selected as one of the 100 best books in history by the Bokklubben World Library, and listed as one of the ten best Asian novels of all time by The Telegraph in 2014. Despite its success and dominance in Chinese literature, Lu Xun's stories took five years before they were widely recognized as a notable works of literature. Before he published the "Diary", Lu Xun was in a state of complete hopelessness and despair. His state of mind being unknown readers during this time, except to the few individuals who were close to him. Thus "Diary of a Madman", with its use of foreign techniques, was not easily comprehensible to most audiences at the time. The theme of cannibalism, and notion of "eating oneself", sparked controversy and criticism among readers due to its ambiguity and interpretation as an extremely harsh criticism of general Chinese culture and traditional ideas. Lu Xun's attempts to cure the cultural malaise which exists in traditional Chinese society through his writings were not easily embraced. However, the "unprecedented" nature of the story and its salient themes and timely arrival captured the attention of many authors and commentators alike. Overall, Lu Xun's work serves as an account of historical change in republican era China and biting social criticism towards issues which still hold relevance in Chinese society today. Lu Xun's short stories were recognized as a significant work of modern classical Chinese literature, reflecting the themes of Chinese society's struggle to break free from a culture of tyrannical imperial power which had ruled the country for millenia, the problematic social structure of Chinese society and the political issues of the time. (wikipedia.org)

The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life is a 1915 novel by Sinclair Lewis.The story follows the life of Carl Ericson as he grows up and matures. He has to face the choice of either going to his town college, to a private school with a childhood friend, or live in the wilderness with his older friend, who had a cottage in the middle of the forest. (wikipedia.org)About the author:Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 - January 10, 1951) was an American writer and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." He is best known for his novels Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).His works are known for their critical views of American capitalism and materialism in the interwar period. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds." Compared to his contemporaries, Lewis's reputation suffered a precipitous decline among literary scholars throughout the 20th century. Despite his enormous popularity during the 1920s, by the 21st century most of his works had been eclipsed in prominence by other writers with less commercial success during the same time period, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.Since the 2010s there has been renewed interest in Lewis's work, in particular his 1935 dystopian satire It Can't Happen Here. In the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, It Can't Happen Here surged to the top of Amazon's list of best-selling books. Scholars have found eerie parallels in his novels to the COVID-19 crisis, and to the rise of Donald Trump.He has been honored by the U.S. Postal Service with a postage stamp in the Great Americans series. (wikipedia.org)

An exemplary "entry-level" introduction to Beethoven's life and music, this little book is still in print* almost a century after its first publication. Sullivan rarely assumes musical knowledge or expertise on the part of the reader but discusses Beethoven's major works in terms of what they mean to us and how they reflect the composer's deepening understanding of existence in response to the crises in his life.Inevitably the book shows its age here and there: Sullivan tends to see humanity as evolving towards some higher ideal; and there's a Victorian whiff to his chiding Wagner for depicting eroticism. Some readers will question his evaluations of J. S. Bach, Mozart and Shakespeare vis-a-vis Beethoven. Others may find outmoded his division of Beethoven's career into three main periods. Some of the biographical details can now be called into question. But these are minor quibbles. His discussions of the works themselves are simple, eloquent and illuminating ("a fierce joyousness" in the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony, "sorrow without hope, sorrow for what is irrevocable, and a longing for what has not been and never can be" in the Cavatina of the B-flat quartet, Op 130; Sullivan does find more in the slow movement of the third Rasoumovsky quartet than I've usually heard in performance).Juxtaposing his interpretations of the music with accounts of the main events in Beethoven's life, Sullivan convincingly argues the case for a composer of intense tragic power, "more than Bacchic" joy, and intense and elusive spirituality. (John Park)About the author:John William Navin Sullivan (1886-1937) was a popular science writer and literary journalist, and the author of a study of Beethoven. He wrote some of the earliest non-technical accounts of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and was known personally to many important writers in London in the 1920s, including Aldous Huxley, John Middleton Murry, Wyndham Lewis, Aleister Crowley and T. S. Eliot. (wikipedia.org)

Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century". Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote 14 novels, several children's books and a number of plays, most of which were produced, but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, as many of his stories reflect. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner, but also cheerful company.His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". He would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which reaches a climax with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. Blackwood died after several strokes. Officially his death on 10 December 1951 was from cerebral thrombosis, with arteriosclerosis as a contributing factor. He was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, and scattered them in the mountains that he had loved for more than forty years. (wikipedia.org)

The story is comprised of a narrative written to the protagonist's twin brother looking back on his short marriage to an artistically-creative young woman who was his short-lived wife and can be seen as signifying both a mesmerizing beauty embodying true love as well as possibly a dark force of seduction. The narrative mainly documents the protagonist's spiritual development through the years following his short marriage and the effect her embodiment still has on him, either through memory or ghostly presence. (Robert Blenheim) About the authorAlgernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century". Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote 14 novels, several children's books and a number of plays, most of which were produced, but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, as many of his stories reflect. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner, but also cheerful company.His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". He would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which reaches a climax with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. Blackwood died after several strokes. Officially his death on 10 December 1951 was from cerebral thrombosis, with arteriosclerosis as a contributing factor. He was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, and scattered them in the mountains that he had loved for more than forty years. (wikipedia.org)

Allan Quatermain is an 1887 novel by H. Rider Haggard. It is the sequel to Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines. Haggard wrote the book over his summer holiday in 1885 immediately after King Solomon's Mines. It was first serialised in Longman's Magazine before being published. At the beginning of the book, Allan Quatermain's only son has died and he longs to get back into the wilderness. He persuades Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good, and the Zulu chief Umslopogaas to accompany him, and they set out from the coast of east Africa into the territory of the Maasai. While staying with a Scottish missionary, Mr. Mackenzie, they run into a group of Maasai who kidnap Mr. Mackenzie's daughter. The Maasai demand the life of one of the party as ransom, but instead they lead an attack on the Maasai, catching them by surprise and slaughtering them. The group then travel by canoe along an underground river to a lake (which turns out to be the sacred lake of Zu-Vendis) in the kingdom of Zu-Vendis beyond a range of mountains. The Zu-Vendi are a warlike race of white-skinned people isolated from other African races; their capital is called Milosis. At the time of the British party's arrival, they are ruled jointly by two sisters, Nyleptha and Sorais. The priests of the Zu-Vendi religion are hostile to the explorers as they had killed hippopotamuses - animals sacred to the Zu-Vendis - on their arrival, but the queens protect them.Both sisters fall passionately in love with Curtis, but Curtis loves only Nyleptha. Together with Nyleptha's rejection of the nobleman Nasta, the lord of a highland domain, a civil war breaks out. Sorais' and Nasta's forces fight against those of Nyleptha, Curtis and Quatermain. After a battle in which Queen Nyleptha's forces emerge victorious despite being outnumbered, it turns out that Queen Nyleptha is threatened by the treachery of the priests, who plan to murder her in her palace before her army's return. Umslopogaas and one loyal warrior manage to save her by defending the main doorway of the palace, while killing the attackers including Nasta and the chief priest Agon, although both are mortally wounded. Defeated and jealous, Sorais takes her own life. Nyleptha and Curtis become queen and king, while Quatermain dies from a wound suffered in the battle. The book Science-Fiction: The Early Years said about Allan Quatermain that the book was "one of Haggard's most successful works" and "the lost-race novel par excellence, setting up many of the motifs and fictional patterns that became an integral part of the subgenre". King Solomon's Mines and Allan Quatermain were adapted into the film King Solomon's Treasure. Allan Quatermain was also adapted into the film Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold. (wikipedia.org)

"The Willows" is a novella by English author Algernon Blackwood, originally published as part of his 1907 collection The Listener and Other Stories. It is one of Blackwood's best known works and has been influential on a number of later writers. Horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction. Two friends are midway on a canoe trip down the River Danube. Throughout the story, Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment-river, sun, wind-with powerful and ultimately threatening characteristics. Most ominous are the masses of dense, desultory, menacing willows, which "moved of their own will as though alive, and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of the horrible."Shortly after landing their canoe for the evening on a sandy island near Bratislava in the Dunajské luhy Protected Landscape Area of Austria-Hungary, the narrator reflects on the river's potency, human qualities, and his own will:Sleepy at first, but later developing violent desires as it became conscious of its deep soul, it rolled, like some huge fluid being, through all the countries we had passed, holding our little craft on its mighty shoulders, playing roughly with us sometimes, yet always friendly and well-meaning, till at length we had come inevitably to regard it as a Great Personage.Blackwood also specifically characterizes the silvery, windblown willows as sinister:And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.At one point, the two men see a traveler in his "flat-bottomed boat". However, the man appears to be warning them and ultimately crosses himself before hurtling forward on the river, out of sight. During the night, mysterious forces emerge from within the forest, including dark shapes which seem to trace the narrator's consciousness, tapping sounds outside their tent, shifting gong-like noises, bizarre shadows, and the appearance that the willows have changed location. In the morning, the two realize that one of their paddles is missing, a slit in the canoe needs repair, and some of their food has disappeared. A hint of distrust arises between them. The howling wind dies down on the second day, and a humming calm ensues. During the second night, the second man, the Swede, attempts to hurl himself into the river as a "sacrifice". However, he is saved by the narrator. The next morning, the Swede claims that the mysterious forces have found another sacrifice which may save them. They discover the corpse of a peasant lodged in roots near the shore. When they touch the body, a flurry of living presence seems to rise from it and disappear into the sky. Later, they see the body is pockmarked with funnel shapes similar to the ones viewed across the island's coastline during their experience. These are "Their awful mark!" the Swede says. The body is swept away, resembling an "otter" they thought they had seen the previous day, and the story ends. (wikipedia.org)

These stories have that wonderful turn of the century feel to them, where horror is a matter of the toppling of a protagonist's spiritual and psychological underpinnings by the inexplicable, rather than our own 21st century's grotesque reveling in gore and physical mutilation. (Mark Hauer)About the authorAlgernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century". Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote 14 novels, several children's books and a number of plays, most of which were produced, but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, as many of his stories reflect. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner, but also cheerful company.His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". He would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which reaches a climax with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. Blackwood died after several strokes. Officially his death on 10 December 1951 was from cerebral thrombosis, with arteriosclerosis as a contributing factor. He was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, and scattered them in the mountains that he had loved for more than forty years. (wikipedia.org)

A healthy dose of Victorian meta physics outlines this story of a man's spiritual awakening after he meets a mysterious man and boy aboard a steamer ship touring the Greek isles. Always well written with beautiful prose... (Robert Williams) About the authorAlgernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951) was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century". Throughout his adult life, he was an occasional essayist for periodicals. In his late thirties, he moved back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and later telling them on radio and television. He also wrote 14 novels, several children's books and a number of plays, most of which were produced, but not published. He was an avid lover of nature and the outdoors, as many of his stories reflect. To satisfy his interest in the supernatural, he joined The Ghost Club. He never married; according to his friends he was a loner, but also cheerful company.His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". He would also often write stories for newspapers at short notice, with the result that he was unsure exactly how many short stories he had written and there is no sure total. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels The Centaur, which reaches a climax with a traveller's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and Julius LeVallon and its sequel The Bright Messenger, which deal with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness. Blackwood died after several strokes. Officially his death on 10 December 1951 was from cerebral thrombosis, with arteriosclerosis as a contributing factor. He was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. A few weeks later his nephew took his ashes to Saanenmöser Pass in the Swiss Alps, and scattered them in the mountains that he had loved for more than forty years. (wikipedia.org)

Clouds of Witness is a 1926 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, the second in her series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. In the United States the novel was first published in 1927 under the title Clouds of Witnesses.The book's title derives from Hebrews, Chapter 12 verse 1: "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." In his 2017 overview of the classic crime genre, Martin Edwards suggests that Clouds of Witness is the work of a novelist learning her craft, but that it displays the storytelling qualities that soon made Sayers famous. While this early portrayal of Wimsey verges on a caricature, Sayers sought to characterise him in greater depth in later novels. Edwards notes that in this novel Wimsey is portrayed not only as a great detective but also as a man of action, and he quotes part of the defence counsel's speech to the House of Lords, explaining Wimsey's transatlantic dash to attend the trial: "My lords, at this moment this all-important witness is cleaving the air high above the wide Atlantic. In this wintry weather he is braving a peril which would appal any heart but his own and that of the world-famous aviator whose help he has enlisted, so that no moment may be lost in freeing his noble brother from this terrible charge. My lords, the barometer is falling."This fictional flight was written in 1926, a year before Charles Lindbergh achieved the same feat in reality (although Alcock and Brown, flying together, had crossed the Atlantic non-stop in 1919).A copy of Clouds of Witness was one of the volumes modified by Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell in their adulterations of library books from the Islington and Hampstead libraries in the early 1960s.In 1972 the novel was the subject of a BBC TV mini-series starring Ian Carmichael as Wimsey and Glyn Houston as Bunter. (wikipedia.org)About the author: Dorothy Leigh Sayers (13 June 1893 - 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages.She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Sayers was considered one of its four "Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.Sayers is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays. She considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. Sayers's obituarist, writing in The New York Times in 1957, noted that many critics at the time regarded her mystery The Nine Tailors as her finest literary achievement. (wikipedia.org)

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a sequence of stories by Stephen Leacock, first published in 1912. It is generally considered to be one of the most enduring classics of Canadian humorous literature. The fictional setting for these stories is Mariposa, a small town on the shore of Lake Wissanotti. Although drawn from his experiences in Orillia, Ontario, Leacock notes: "Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary, it is about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the sea, with the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels."This work has remained popular for its universal appeal. Many of the characters, though modelled on townspeople of Orillia, are small town archetypes. Their shortcomings and weaknesses are presented in a humorous but affectionate way. Often, the narrator exaggerates the importance of the events in Mariposa compared to the rest of the world. For example, when there is a country-wide election, "the town of Mariposa, was, of course, the storm centre and focus point of the whole turmoil."The story of the steamboat Mariposa Belle sinking in Lake Wissanotti is one of the best-loved in the set. The apparent magnitude of this accident is lessened somewhat when it is revealed that the depth of the water is less than six feet. Men from the town come to the rescue in an un-seaworthy lifeboat which sinks beneath them just as they are pulled onto the steamer, and the narrator earnestly remarks that this was "one of the smartest pieces of rescue work ever seen on the lake." The stories in the book were initially published as a sequence of short literary pieces serialized in the Montreal Daily Star from February 17 to June 22, 1912. Leacock reworked the series - by the means of additions, combinations, and divisions (but no deletions) - and assembled it as the book's manuscript. The book was first published on August 9, 1912. Leacock corrected proof pages of the first edition of Sunshine Sketches while in Paris. In 1923, George Locke commented in the New York Evening Post that library students had chosen the book as one of a dozen "[...] books of prose fiction would best represent the works of Canadian authors to readers who wish to know something of Canadian life".The book, along with the Champlain statue in Couchiching Beach Park on Lake Couchiching, were used in tourist promotions for the town as proof of Orillia's civic pride in the decades following the 1925 Dominion Day celebrations.In 1952, the book was adapted into a television series, Sunshine Sketches, by CBC Television, the network's first foray into Canadian-produced drama. The cast of the series included John Drainie as the Narrator, Paul Kligman as John Smith, Timothy Findley as Peter Pupkin, Eric House as Dean Drone, Peg Dixon as Liliane Drone and Robert Christie as Golgotha Gingham. A second television adaptation premiered on CBC in 2012, and stars Gordon Pinsent and Jill Hennessy. This made-for-TV movie features two stories from the book, "The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias" and "The Hostelry of Mr. Smith", and was created to coincide with the book's 100th anniversary. The stories are a mix of fact and fiction; drawing on details of Leacock's own life and that of his literary creation. (wikipedia.org)

Don't come to Mark Twain looking for a tightly outlined, focused work. He wasn't that type of writer. His books are closer to theme and variations - starting with an idea, riffing on it, detouring from it, throwing in another theme, detouring from that with wild, tangentially connected variations, and back around again. And somehow he makes it work with his one of a kind American voice that's always just barely concealing a chuckle. Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain's memoir of his early life learning to be a pilot on a Mississippi River Boat during the glory days of those crafts. It's also a travel book, recording his trip on the river over twenty years after he had left it. It includes excerpts from his then work in progress, Huckleberry Finn (in a form different than you will find in that novel). It's full of broad jokes, tall tales, shaggy dog stories, and legends and folklore that Twain satirically deconstructs. He includes a bit of Mississippi River history, takes a few shots at some of his favorite targets (religion and the medieval romances of Sir Walter Scott) and even engages in some touching nostalgia as he visits his childhood home, Hannibal, Missouri. (Theo Logos) About Mark TwainSamuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the "Great American Novel". Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. His humorous story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was published in 1865, based on a story that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention and was even translated into French. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures but invested in ventures that lost most of it-such as the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but in time overcame his financial troubles with the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers. He eventually paid all his creditors in full, even though his bankruptcy relieved him of having to do so. Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well; he died the day after the comet made its closest approach to the Earth. (wikipedia.org)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC*SG (29 May 1874 - 14 June 1936) was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox". Of his writing style, Time observed: "Whenever possible, Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories-first carefully turning them inside out."Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and wrote on apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognised the wide appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism from high church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman and John Ruskin.Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. He was a columnist for the Daily News, The Illustrated London News, and his own paper, G. K.'s Weekly; he also wrote articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica, including the entry on Charles Dickens and part of the entry on Humour in the 14th edition (1929). His best-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown, who appeared only in short stories, while The Man Who Was Thursday is arguably his best-known novel. He was a convinced Christian long before he was received into the Catholic Church, and Christian themes and symbolism appear in much of his writing. In the United States, his writings on distributism were popularised through The American Review, published by Seward Collins in New York.Of his nonfiction, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1906) has received some of the broadest-based praise. According to Ian Ker (The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845-1961, 2003), "In Chesterton's eyes Dickens belongs to Merry, not Puritan, England"; Ker treats Chesterton's thought in chapter 4 of that book as largely growing out of his true appreciation of Dickens, a somewhat shop-soiled property in the view of other literary opinions of the time. The biography was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens's work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars.Chesterton's writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour. He employed paradox, while making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy, theology and many other topics. ...(wikipedia.org)