Classic Books

Charlotte Brontë, one of the best known novelists of the 19th century, wrote the poem ‘Richard Coeur de Lion and Blondel’ at the age of 17, when she returned home from boarding school. The historical subject matter of this poem and the others written in the notebook by Charlotte, are a digression from the complex fantasy worlds which she and her siblings had been creating during this period. It was their usual practice to write in self-made notebooks in miniscule handwriting that was very difficult for other people to read.

Although I call the following pages mine, and upon the strength of them write myself Author, yet I must in truth confess, that I have very little to do with them, and still less to do with the story they record; and therefore I am fain to treat the world with something of my own exclusive composition, in the shape of a preface. The facts of the case are as follow: I one day possessed myself of a bundle of manuscript notes—no matter when or how, so that they were honestly come by, for that is all that you, or I, or Sir Richard Birnie, have to do with the matter. Now I say they were honestly come by, and the onus probandi must rest upon the other party. So no more of that.

Riders of the Purple Sage is a Western novel by Zane Grey, first published by Harper & Brothers in 1912. Considered by scholars to have played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre, the novel has been called “the most popular western novel of all time.”

First published in the year 1921, famous writer L. M. Montgomery’s present book ‘Rilla of Ingleside’ is the eighth of nine books in the Anne of Green Gables series.

Recounts the life and adventures of Robin Hood, who, with his band of followers, lived as an outlaw in Sherwood Forest dedicated to fight against tyranny.

First published in the year 1896, ‘Rodney Stone’ is a gothic mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle. The eponymous narrator of the novel is a Sussex country boy who is taken to London by his uncle Sir Charles Tregellis, a highly respected gentleman and arbiter of fashion who is on familiar terms with the most important people of Great Britain.

Rogue Herries’ is the first book in Hugh Walpole’s “Herries Chronicle saga”. It was first published in 1930. It is the tale of Francis Herries, who is a violent and impetuous man. He is a faithless husband and a capricious father. The story revolves around the Borrowdale valley, which is his home for 40 years, and his unrequited love for gypsy Mirabell Starr – the two forces which drive him.

First published in the year 1903, the present fictional novel ‘Romance’ was written in collaboration by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford. This books is one of their three famous collaborated books.

His old widowed mother would not die happy unless he were rehabilitated, and to this end he knew that she and his faithful wife, O Yumi, prayed daily before the family shrine.
How often had he racked his brains to find some way by which it were possible to prove his unchanging fidelity to Shusen; for the true big-hearted fellow never resented his punishment, but staunchly believed that the ties which bound him to his lord were in no wise annulled by the separation.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

“From the bestselling author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm comes a story of life and love in a quaint logging village on the mighty Saco River in Maine.”

“This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about which no books have been written by persons who were on the ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-mining fever in Nevada—a curious episode, in some respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in it.” -Preface by Mark Twain

A medical fantasy story by the renowned British author of the famous Sherlock Holmes series – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward Fitz Gerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and numbering about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A ruba’i is a two-line stanza with two parts (or hemistiches) per line, hence the word rubAYOT (derived from the Japanese language leaves for “a million”), meaning “quatrains”.

Turgenev is an author who no longer belongs to Russia only. During the last fifteen years of his life he won for himself the reading public, first in France, then in Germany and America, and finally in England.

In his funeral oration the spokesman of the most artistic and critical of European nations, Ernest Renan, hailed him as one of the greatest writers of our times: ‘The Master, whose exquisite works have charmed our century, stands more than any other man as the incarnation of a whole race,’ because ‘a whole world lived in him and spoke through his mouth.’ Not the Russian world only, we may add, but the whole Slavonic world, to which it was ‘an honour to have been expressed by so great a Master.’

This recognition was, however, of slow growth. It had nothing in it of the sudden wave of curiosity and gushing enthusiasm which in a few years lifted Count Tolstoi to world-wide fame. Neither in the personality of Turgenev, nor in his talent, was there anything to strike and carry away popular imagination.

Seven-and-twenty years ago, and a bleak evening in March. There are gas-lamps flaring down in Ratcliff Highway, and the sound of squeaking fiddles and trampling feet in many public-houses tell of festivity provided for Jack-along-shore. The emporiums of slop-sellers are illuminated for the better display of tarpaulin coats and hats, so stiff of build that they look like so many sea-faring suicides, pendent from the low ceilings. These emporiums are here and there enlivened by festoons of many-coloured bandana handkerchief’s; and on every pane of glass in shop or tavern window is painted the glowing representation of Britannia’s pride, the immortal Union Jack.

This exclusive search for physical and economic well-being prosecuted in disregard of morality is contrary to divine law, as some wise men in the West have shown. One of these was John Ruskin who contends in Unto This Last that men can be happy only if they obey the moral law.
We in India are very much given nowadays to an imitation of the West. It is necessary to imitate the virtues of the West, but there is no doubt that Western standards are often bad, and every one will agree that we should shun all evil things.

From the stories contained in what may be called the “chap-book literature” of Russia, I have made but few extracts. It may, however, be as well to say a few words about them. There is a Russian word lub, diminutive lubok, meaning the soft bark of the lime tree, which at one time was used instead of paper. The popular tales which were current in former days were at first printed on sheets or strips of this substance, whence the term lubochnuiya came to be given to all such productions of the cheap press, even after paper had taken the place of bark.

The innumerable questions which have been put to me since my return to America have called to my attention the fact that, in spite of all that has been written about Russia, the common incidents of everyday life are not known, or are known so imperfectly that any statement of them is a travesty. I may cite, as an example, a book published within the past two years, and much praised in America by the indiscriminating as a truthful picture of life. The whole story hung upon the great musical talent of the youthful hero. The hero skated to church through the streets, gazed down the long aisle where the worshipers were assembled (presumably in pews), ascended to the organ gallery, sang an impromptu solo with trills and embellishments, was taken in hand by the enraptured organist who had played there for thirty years, and developed into a great composer. Omitting a mass of other absurdities scattered through the book, I will criticise this crucial point. There are no organs or organists in Russia; there are no pews, or aisles, or galleries for the choir, and there are never any trills or embellishments in the church music. A boy could skate to church in New York more readily than in Moscow, where such a thing was never seen, and where they are not educated up to roller skates. Lastly, as the church specified, St. Vasily, consists of a nest of small churches connected by narrow, labyrinthine corridors, and is approached from the street up two flights of low-ceiled stairs, it is an impossibility that the boy should have viewed the “aisle” and assembled congregation from his skates at the door. That is a fair specimen of the distortions of facts which I am constantly encountering.

Nigh upon fifty winters ago, there was growing up in the North a boy named Halfred. In Iceland, on the Hamund Fjord, stood the splendid hall of his father, Hamund.At that time, so the heathen people believe, elves and goblins still moved about freely among the Northern nations.

The present book ‘Sailing Alone Around the World’ is sailing memoir or a travel autobiography of Joshua Slocum. It was first published in the year 1900. This memoir is about his single-handed global circumnavigation aboard the sloop Spray. Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone. The book was an immediate success and highly influential in inspiring later travelers.

Saint Joan’ is a play by George Bernard Shaw about 15th Century French military figure Joan of Arc. Premiering in 1923, three years after her canonization by the Roman Catholic Church, the play dramatises what is known of her life based on the substantial records of her trial. Shaw studied the transcripts and decided that the concerned people acted in good faith according to their beliefs.

A celebrated sanskrit play written by Kalidasa. ‘Sakoontala; Or, The Lost Ring: An Indian Drama’ is the story of rishi Vishwamitra and apsara Rambha’s daughter Shakuntala, who lives in an ashram in a forest. It is a story of her falling in love with king Dushyanta, their separation, the curse of a sage, her bearing Dushyanta’s son, and reunion. It is a classic tale of tragic romance.