The Hunchback of Notre Dameby Victor HugoPREFACE.A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:~ANArKH~.These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meani
The History of John Bullby John ArbuthnotINTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY.This is the book which fixed the name and character of John Bull on the English people. Though in one part of the story he is thin and long nosed, as a result of trouble, generally he is suggested to us as "ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter," an honest tradesman, simple and straightforward, easily cheated; but when he takes his affairs into his own hands, acting with good plain sense, knowing very well what he wants done, and doing it.The book was begun in the year 1712, and published in four successi
Notes from the Undergroundby Feodor DostoevskyPART IUNDERGROUND**The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course,imaginary. Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as thewriter of these notes not only may, but positively must, exist inour society, when we consider the circumstances in the midst ofwhich our society is formed. I have tried to expose to the viewof the public more distinctly than is commonly done, one of thecharacters of the recent past. He is one of the representativesof a generation still living. In this fragment, entitled...
The Illustrious Gaudissartby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Katharine Prescott WormeleyDEDICATIONTo Madame la Duchesse de Castries.THE ILLUSTRIOUS GAUDISSARTCHAPTER IThe commercial traveller, a personage unknown to antiquity, is one ofthe striking figures created by the manners and customs of our presentepoch. May he not, in some conceivable order of things, be destined tomark for coming philosophers the great transition which welds a periodof material enterprise to the period of intellectual strength? Our...
TOLD AFTER SUPPERTOLD AFTER SUPPERby Jerome K. Jerome1- Page 2-TOLD AFTER SUPPERINTRODUCTORYIt was Christmas Eve.I begin this way because it is the proper, orthodox, respectable way tobegin, and I have been brought up in a proper, orthodox, respectable way,and taught to always do the proper, orthodox, respectable thing; and thehabit clings to me.Of course, as a mere matter of information it is quite unnecessary to...
Last Days in a Dutch Hotelby William Dean HowellsWhen we said that we were going to Scheveningen, in the middle ofSeptember, the portier of the hotel at The Hague was sure we should bevery cold, perhaps because we had suffered so much in his house already;and he was right, for the wind blew with a Dutch tenacity of purpose fora whole week, so that the guests thinly peopling the vast hostelry seemedto rustle through its chilly halls and corridors like so many autumnleaves. We were but a poor hundred at most where five hundred would nothave been a crowd; and, when we sat down at the long table
THE ALHAMBRAby Washington IrvingPreface to the Revised Edition.Rough draughts of some of the following tales and essays wereactually written during a residence in the Alhambra; others weresubsequently added, founded on notes and observations made there. Carewas taken to maintain local coloring and verisimilitude; so that thewhole might present a faithful and living picture of that microcosm,that singular little world into which I had been fortuitously...
Ursulaby Honore de BalzacTranslated by Katharine Prescott WormeleyDEDICATIONTo Mademoiselle Sophie Surville,It is a true pleasure, my dear niece, to dedicate to you thisbook, the subject and details of which have won theapprobation, so difficult to win, of a young girl to whom theworld is still unknown, and who has compromised with none ofthe lofty principles of a saintly education. Young girls areindeed a formidable public, for they ought not to be allowedto read books less pure than the purity of their souls; they...
AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONSby Adam Smith1776BOOK TWOOF THE NATURE, ACCUMULATION, AND EMPLOYMENT OF STOCKINTRODUCTIONIN that rude state of society in which there is no divisionof labour, in which exchanges are seldom made, and in which everyman provides everything for himself, it is not necessary that anystock should be accumulated or stored up beforehand in order tocarry on the business of the society. Every man endeavours tosupply by his own industry his own occasional wants as they...
A Discourse of Coin and Coinageby Rice Vaughan1675A Discourse of Coin and Coinage: The first Invention, Use,Matter, Forms, Proportions and Differences, ancient & modern:with the Advantages and Disadvantages of the Rise and Fallthereof, in our own or Neighbouring Nations: and the Reasons.Together with a short Account of our Common Law therein.by Rice Vaughan, late of Grayes-Inn, Esq;London, Printed by Th. Dawks, for Th. Basset, at the George, nearCliffords-Inn, in Fleet-street. 1675.To the Right Honourable Henry Earl of Clarendon, ViscountCornbury, and Baron Hide of Hindon; Lord Chamberlain to
Common Senseby Thomas PaineINTRODUCTIONPerhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages,are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour;a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficialappearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcryin defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides.Time makes more converts than reason.As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Meansof calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too whichmight never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated...
Table of ContentsCHARLES DICKENS (1812-70)The Haunted HouseNo. I Branch Line: The Signal ManBULWER-LYTTON (1803-73)The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the BrainThe IncantationTHOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859)The AvengerCHARLES ROBERT MATURIN (1782-1824)Melmoth the WandererLAURENCE STERNE (1713-68)A Mystery with a MoralWILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-63)On Being Found OutThe Notch on the AxANONYMOUSBourgonefThe Closed CabinetTHE HAUNTED HOUSEIN TWO CHAPTERSTHE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE...
The Sorrows of Young Wertherby J.W. von GoetheTranslated by Thomas Carlyle and R.D. BoylanPREFACEI have carefully collected whatever I have been able to learn of the story of poor Werther, and here present it to you, knowing that you will thank me for it. To his spirit and character you cannot refuse your admiration and love: to his fate you will not deny your tears.And thou, good soul, who sufferest the same distress as he endured once, draw comfort from his sorrows; and let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer compani
daughters, one ugly and wicked, and this one she loved because shewas her own daughter, and one beautiful and good, and this one shehated, because she was her step-daughter. The step-daughter once hada pretty apron, which the other fancied so much that she becameenvious, and told her mother that she must and would have that apron.Be quiet, my child, said the old woman, and you shall have it. Yourstep-sister has long deserved death, to-night when she is asleep Iwill come and cut her head off. Only be careful that you are at thefar-side of the bed, and push her well to the front. It would ha
DEAD SOULSPART ICHAPTER ITo the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart britchkaa light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors, retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a gentlemana man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was accompanied by no particular