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Description

The Power of Darkness is a five-act drama that follows the downfall of the peasants Anísya and Nikíta as they succumb to a series of sordid temptations, from adultery and drunkenness to outright murder. Written in 1886 but suppressed by censors until 1902, the play is a realist portrayal of some of the darkest elements of Russian peasant life. Similar to some other late Tolstoy works, like Resurrection, the play’s psychological exploration of human depravity is accompanied by a sharp social critique of the Russian Empire and its role in perpetuating poverty and ignorance among its lowest and most marginalized classes.

Description

Xavier de Maistre lived mostly as a military man, fighting in France and Russia around the turn of the 19th century. In 1790 a duel he participated in led him to be put under arrest in Turin; during his confinement in a tiny chamber, he wrote his most famous work, “A Journey Round My Room.”

“Journey” is a short story written as a parody of the grand travelogues popular at the time. He frames his six weeks’ confinement as a long journey across the unknown land of his room, visiting the furniture, the paintings on the wall, and even venturing to the north side. De Maistre didn’t hold the work in very high regard, but after his brother had it published in 1794 it became a fast success, eventually calling for a sequel (“A Night Journey Round My Room”), and warranting allusions in fiction by writers like D. H. Lawrence, Wilkie Collins, W. Somerset Maugham, and Jorge Luis Borges.

The rest of his literary corpus is modest, and consists entirely of short works. “The Leper of the City of Aosta” is a philosophical dialogue on the struggles of a leper whose days are seemingly filled with unending sorrow; “The Prisoners of the Caucasus” is the fictional narrative of a captured general and his faithful servant, set against a rich background of Cossack factions in the Caucasus of Imperial Russia reminiscent of Tolstoy’s Hadji Murád; and “The Young Siberian” is the true story of Prascovia Lopouloff, a poor Russian girl who sets out on a journey to secure an imperial pardon for her exiled father.

De Maistre never set out to have a literary career, but his carefully-considered output made him famous across the continent.

Description

Gil Blas isn’t the first picaresque novel, but it’s one of the genre’s most famous examples; it’s a novel that at one point in history was on the bookshelf of every good reader, and it has been featured in allusions across literature for centuries after its publication between 1715 and 1735.

Gil Blas is the name of a Spanish boy born to a poor stablehand and a chambermaid. He’s educated by his uncle before leaving to attend a university, but on the way his journey is interrupted by a band of robbers, and his picaresque adventures begin. Blas embarks on a series of jobs, challenges, advances, setbacks, romances, and fights on his path through life, ultimately continuing to rise in station thanks to his affability and quick wit. On his way he encounters many different kinds of people, both honest and dishonest, as well as many different social classes. Blas’ series of breezy, episodic adventures give Lesage an opportunity to satirize every stratum of society, from the poor, to doctors, the clergy, writers and playwrights, the rich, and even royalty.

Though Lesage wrote in French, Gil Blas is ultimately a Spanish novel in nature: Blas himself is Spanish, and his adventures take place in Spain. The details Lesage wrote into the novel were so accurate that some accused him of lifting from earlier works, like Marcos de Obregón by Vicente Espinel; others even accuse it of being written by someone else, arguing that no Frenchman could know so much detail about Spanish life and society.

Despite any controversy, Gil Blas was translated into English by Tobias Smollett in 1748. His translation was so complete that it became the standard translation up to the modern day.

Description

Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons dangereuses) is an early French novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, first published in four volumes in 1782. At the time of its publication novels were a new literary form, and Laclos chose to present his story in an epistolary style, composing the novel solely of a series of letters written by the major characters to each other. It was first translated into English in 1812 and has since become universally regarded as one the most significant early French novels.

The story is framed around the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two narcissistic French aristocrats and rivals who enjoy games of seduction and manipulation, and who most especially enjoy one-upping each other. The letters they send to each other portray an interconnected web of seduction, revenge, and malice, and are interspersed with the more innocent letters of their victims.

Dangerous Liaisons has often been seen as a depiction of the corruption and depravity of the French nobility shortly before the French Revolution, thereby making a negative statement about the Ancien Régime. But it’s also a depiction of the timeless problems surrounding sex and love, and a realistic portrayal of desires that are often beyond our control. As Laclos enjoyed the patronage of Louis Philippe II, the Duke of Orléans, and as other royalist and conservative figures like Queen Marie Antoinette enjoyed the book, it’s likely it wasn’t seen as a morality tale until after the French Revolution.

Description

An American composer, George Bevan, falls in love with a mysterious young lady who takes refuge in his taxicab one day. He tracks her down to an English country manor, where a case of mistaken identity leads to all manner of comedy and excitement.

The novel was first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in 1919. It was later adapted into a silent film, a stage play, and a musical starring Fred Astaire.

Description

After inheriting a fortune, and just back to New York from a cruise on which he spotted an intriguing young woman, Jimmy Pitt is drifting. So after seeing a blockbuster play about a gentleman thief, he’s ready to bet his friends at the Strollers’ Club that he could pull off a burglary himself. That night he makes friends with a real-life “Bowery Boy” thief, who helps him break into a corrupt police captain’s house, and everyone gets way more than they bargained for. Later, the action moves to the Earl of Dreever’s castle in England. There, the misunderstandings, threats, cheating, and confusion only multiply, requiring all of Jimmy’s wits and daring to clear up.

In this short novel, P. G. Wodehouse takes on many of the themes his fans will recognize from his Jeeves and Wooster books: the ridiculous upper class, the frequent need to hide one’s suspicious origins (while uncovering those of others), and the importance of amateur theatricals, dressing for dinner, champagne, and true love.

First published in 1910, A Gentleman of Leisure has also appeared in several other versions, under the titles The Gem Collector and The Intrusion of Jimmy. It was also adapted into a Broadway play that starred Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and silent movie versions followed in 1915 and 1923. This Standard Ebook is based on the edition published in 1921 by Herbert Jenkins Ltd.

Description

The Kalevala is a Finnish epic poem, which tells of the creation of the world and how the heroes that inhabit it came to be, and the legends of their conflicts and adventures. Spread out over fifty cantos, we hear how existence was created from the egg of a duck, how the forests were created from the chips of a world-tree felled by an ancient wizard, how the mighty Sampo—a multicolored mill of plenty—was created and later stolen, how the nine dread diseases came to be, and many more such stories.

The tales contained here are formed from Finland’s oral history. The author, Elias Lönnrot, was a Finnish doctor who was fascinated with his country’s stories, so between the 1820s and 1850s he embarked on a series of expeditions to the countryside of Finland and the surrounding area to collect and transcribe the folk stories told by local people. These tales were gradually collected into several volumes, the final of which is this “new” Kalevala. Lönnrot collected many different variants of each story, then edited each down into a cohesive whole when composing the new verse. The distinctive Kalevala-meter that was a common feature of all the original oral stories was kept during the process, and Crawford used the same with this English translation.

Lönnrot’s work proved extremely influential in Finland, and the national pride it imbued has been cited as a factor in the later Finnish independence movement. The Kalevala was also a source of inspiration for later authors of the twentieth century. Tolkien reused some of the themes and characters for the basis of his fictional universe (in particular The Silmarillion), the Kalevala-meter was used in Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, and even Donald Duck has quested—as the Kalevala heroes did—for the legendary Sampo.

This edition was translated by John Martin Crawford in the late nineteenth century, and includes his introduction discussing some of the themes, characters, and settings.

Description

When it was first published in 1812 as Children’s and Household Tales, this collection of Germanic fairy tales contained eighty-six stories and was criticized because, despite the name, it wasn’t particularly well-suited to children. Over the next forty-five years, stories were added, removed, and modified until the final seventh edition was published in 1857, containing 210 fairy tales. Today, the book is commonly referred to as Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

These fairy tales include well-known characters such as Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel, as well as many more that never became quite as popular. Over the years, these stories have been translated, retold, and adapted to many different media.

This is a collection of Margaret Hunt’s 1884 English translation, originally published in two volumes.

Description

Alexander Mackenzie was the first European to complete a land crossing of the continent of America north of Mexico, preceding the famous Lewis and Clark expedition by twelve years. In his journals he details two separate voyages: one up what is now known as the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean in 1789, and another to what is now Bella Coola on the Pacific Ocean in 1792 and 1793.

Both journeys provide a detailed description of the many difficulties in navigating and traveling in a country that had yet to be mapped. Having to rely on Native guides and rumors, and enduring hardships that almost beggar belief, Mackenzie and his team were able to achieve their objective of finding an east to west land crossing through the Rocky Mountains and to the Pacific Ocean. Although his route didn’t prove as practical as routes found by later explorers, Mackenzie has cemented himself as a key explorer of Western Canada.

Description

The Beasts of Tarzan, the third book in the Tarzan series, was first published in All-Story Cavalier magazine in 1914. It was later published as a novel in 1916.

Tarzan’s old enemy, Nikolas Rokoff, escapes prison and plans his revenge by kidnapping the Tarzan’s son, the heir of Greystoke. He also captures Tarzan and Jane, and takes them all back to Africa, where he strands the Ape-man on an island before continuing on with his dastardly plan. On the island prison Tarzan befriends a troop of apes led by Akut and tames Sheeta the panther before escaping and setting off to rescue his wife and child.