Classic Books

First comprehensive book on comparative religion. Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, James Freeman Clarke attended the Boston Latin School, graduated from Harvard College in 1829, and Harvard Divinity School in 1833. Ordained into the Unitarian church he first became an active minister at Louisville, Kentucky, then a slave state and soon threw himself into the national movement for the abolition of slavery.

A Book of Wonders requires but a brief introduction. Our title-page tells its own tale and forms the best exposition of the contents of the volume.

Everything that is marvellous carries with it much that is instructive, and, in this sense, “Ten Thousand Wonderful Things,” may be made useful for the highest educational purposes. Events which happen in the regular course have no claim to a place in any work that professes to be a register of what is uncommon; and were we to select such Wonders only as are capable of familiar demonstration, we should destroy their right to be deemed wondrous, and, at the same time, defeat the very object which we profess to have in view. A marvel once explained away ceases to be a marvel. For this reason, while rejecting everything that is obviously fictitious and untrue, we have not hesitated to insert many incidents which appear at first sight to be wholly incredible.

It is the French Riviera in the 1920s. Nicole and Dick Diver are a wealthy, elegant, magnetic couple. A coterie of admirers are drawn to them, none more so than the blooming young starlet Rosemary Hoyt. When Rosemary falls for Dick, the Diver’s calculated perfection begins to crack. As dark truths emerge, Fitzgerald shows both the disintegration of a marriage and the failure of idealism. Tender is the Night is as sad as it is beautiful. A profound study of the romantic concept of character, Tender Is the Night is lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.

For nearly a decade I have wanted; with a growing sense of urgency; to write something which would show what the whole War and post-war period — roughly; from the years leading up to 1914 until about 1935 — has meant to the men and women of my generation; the generation of those boys and girls who grew up just before the war broke out. I wanted to give too; if I could; an impression of the changes which that period brought about in the minds and lives of very different groups of individuals belonging to the large section of middle-class society from which my own family comes.

Thackeray does not give the same opportunities for the identification of his scenes as Dickens. The elaboration with which the latter localizes his characters, and the descriptive minutiæ with which he makes their haunts no less memorable than themselves, are not to be found in the works of the author of Vanity Fair. No faculty was stronger in Dickens, or of more service to him, than his power of word-painting. He reproduces the objects p. 2by which the persons he describes are surrounded with a fidelity which would be tedious, if it were not relieved by the humor which humanizes bricks, and imparts a grotesque sort of sensibility to articles of furniture; and it is not easy to think of any of his leading characters without being reminded of the neighborhoods in which they played their parts.

The “Genius” is a semi-autobiographical novel by Theodore Dreiser, first published in 1915. It concerns Eugene Witla, a talented painter of strong sexual desires who grapples with his commitment to his art and the force of his erotic needs. (courtesy: wikipedia)

First published in the year 1903, the present book ‘ iconic American humorist and writer Mark Twain’s collection of thirty comic short stories.

The book “The Abominations of Modern Society” explores the abominations or the evil practices prevailing in this modern world. It is a Christian book which explores and talks in great details about the topics of drinking, fashion, sexuality, pornography, adultery, prostitution, incest, fornication, night clubs, gambling, blasphemy, gambling, and administrative taxes imposed on the common people. The most striking point that the book eloquently asserts is: The best being that God ever made is a good woman, and the worst that the devil ever made is a bad one. The author has written the book with a view to contribute to the society which he seems is rapidly degenerating. The insight is very deep and highly ingenious.

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’ is one of the stories among 56 Sherlock Holmes adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’ is one of the stories among 56 Sherlock Holmes adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Adventure of the Cardboard Box’ is one of the stories among 56 Sherlock Holmes adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Adventure of the Red Circle’ is one of the stories among 56 Sherlock Holmes adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge’ is one of the stories among 56 Sherlock Holmes adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle.

This volume packed with bric-à-brac
I offer you with my affection,—
The story halts, the rhymes are slack—
Poor stuff to add to your collection.
Gems you possess from ages back:
It is the modern junk you lack.

First published in the year 1894, the present adventure novel ‘The Adventures of Captain Horn’ by Frank Richard Stockton was third bestselling novel of that year in the US. Its popular sequel ‘Mrs. Cliff’s Yacht’ was released in 1897.

This I have always regarded as somewhat of a mistake. In real life, the identity of the criminal is a question of supreme importance for practical reasons; but in fiction, where no such reasons exist, I conceive the interest of the reader to be engaged chiefly by the demonstration of unexpected consequences of simple actions, of unsuspected causal connections, and by the evolution of an ordered train of evidence from a mass of facts apparently incoherent and unrelated. The reader’s curiosity is concerned not so much with the question “Who did it?” as with the question “How was the discovery achieved?” That is to say, the ingenious reader is interested more in the intermediate action than in the ultimate result.

In the summer of the year 1777 a lad of about ten years, clad in a suit of gray, was playing in the high-walled garden of the Benedictine Asylum for Orphans in Paris. The sun was pleasant, the birds sang overhead, the roses were many, for the month was June. A hundred lads were noisily running about. They had the look of being well fed, decently clothed, and kindly cared for. An old priest walked to and fro, at times looking up from his breviary to say a pleasant word or to check some threatening quarrel. -an excerpt

First published in the year 1884, the present book ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ was written by famous American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer – Mark Twain. The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, this book is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

First published in the year 1883, ‘The Adventures of Pinocchio’ is a children’s adventure fantasy by Italian author Carlo Collodi. It is a story about an animated puppet, boys who turn into donkeys and other fairy tale devices. The setting of the story is the Tuscan area of Italy. It was a unique literary marriage of genres for its time. The story’s Italian language is peppered with Florentine dialect features, such as the protagonist’s Florentine name.

Reddy Fox lived with Granny Fox. You see, Reddy was one of a large family, so large that Mother Fox had hard work to feed so many hungry little mouths and so she had let Reddy go to live with old Granny Fox. Granny Fox was the wisest, slyest, smartest fox in all the country round, and now that Reddy had grown so big, she thought it about time that he began to learn the things that every fox should know. So every day she took him hunting with her and taught him all the things that she had learned about hunting: about how to steal Farmer Brown’s chickens without awakening Bowser the Hound, and all about the thousand and one ways of fooling a dog which she had learned.

This book is very useful for children and is beneficial in the development of children because the best category of pictures and poetry is included in the books. And the curriculum of these books has been given in a way that helps in the development of children.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the first of Mark Twain’s novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is redolent of life in the Mississippi River towns in which Twain spent his own youth. A sombre undercurrent flows through the high humour and unabashed nostalgia of the novel, however, for beneath the innocence of childhood lie the inequities of adult reality—base emotions and superstitions, murder and revenge, starvation and slavery.

In this translation I have in the main followed the text of Conington and Nettleship. The more important deviations from this text are mentioned in the notes; but I have not thought it necessary to give a complete list of various readings, or to mention any change except where it might lead to misapprehension. Their notes have also been used by me throughout.

One of the most read and most critically read works from early 20th century, ‘The Age of Innocence’ by Edith Wharton was first published in the year 1920. It centers on an upper-class couple’s impending marriage, and the introduction of the bride’s cousin, plagued by scandal, whose presence threatens their happiness. Though the novel questions the assumptions and morals of 1870s New York society, it never develops into an outright condemnation of the institution.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. — From the Book

The Agricola’ is both a portrait of Julius Agricola – the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus’ well-loved and respected father-in-law – and the first detailed account of Britain that has come down to us. It offers fascinating descriptions of the geography, climate and peoples of the country, and a succinct account of the early stages of the Roman occupation, nearly fatally undermined by Boudicca’s revolt in AD 61 but consolidated by campaigns that took Agricola as far as Anglesey and northern Scotland. The war-like German tribes are the focus of Tacitus’ attention in ‘the Germania’, which, like ‘the Agricola’, often compares the behaviour of ‘barbarian’ people favourably with the decadence and corruption of Imperial Rome.