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Description
Though James Joyce earned his literary fame mostly through his short stories and novels, he also published several short books of poetry. In fact Chamber Music, a collection of thirty-six short love poems, was his first major independent publication.
The title of Chamber Music is said to have come from the sound of urine tinkling into a chamber pot—though this was actually a story made up by Joyce after the fact. As he grew older, he came to dislike the title, saying that it was too complacent. Though the story of the title’s genesis suggests the poems are bawdy and raw, in fact they’re each gentle and lyrical love poems, strictly rooted in the romantic tradition. Though the poems didn’t sell well, they met with some critical acclaim from the likes of Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats.
“Gas from a Burner” is a short broadside published by Joyce in 1912. He composed it as he was preparing to leave his home, Ireland, for the last time, before embarking on a new life of exile on the continent. Its targets are his publishers, who for almost a decade stalled the publication of his short story collection Dubliners. They frustrated him to to such an extent that he thought they were actively conspiring against him to prevent his controversial manuscript from ever seeing the light of day. “Gas from a Burner” crystallizes the rage he felt at that pious, hypocritical, and prudish establishment.
Description
Caroline Meeber, known as Sister Carrie to her family, moves to Chicago at the tender age of eighteen to try to make something of herself. Living with her sister and brother-in-law, she quickly finds that life, and work, are hard in the big city. She soon takes up with a traveling salesman she met on the train into town. Months later her eye is turned by one of the salesman’s acquaintances, George Hurstwood, and vice-versa. A series of events lead Carrie and Hurstwood to New York City, where both struggle to live out the aspirations that brought them there.
Theodore Dreiser was one of the earliest naturalist writers, but he wrote Sister Carrie while the United States was still very Victorian in its morals. The book therefore caused a stir from the beginning: Carrie Meeber was clearly, even in the disguised language of the time, a sexually active, unmarried female, who wasn’t made to suffer for her indiscretion to the extent considered necessary at the time. Dreiser’s depiction of rough language merely added to the controversy. The first printing sold only 456 copies in two years; it was to be another five years before Dreiser could convince another publisher to carry the book. Today it’s considered a classic and one of the “greatest of all American urban novels.”
The text of Sister Carrie was unchanged until 1981, when the University of Pennsylvania Press published a new version with 36,000 words restored. The edition was not without controversy: the cuts were originally made before the first printing at the suggestion of Dreiser’s wife, or his friend Arthur Henry, and Dreiser had approved all of them. Although the new Pennsylvania Edition, as it is called, made a good case for restoring the changes, it is the 1907 text that remains the most widely available today, and it is that text in this edition.
Description
On a Chinese Screen was first published in 1922 by Heinemann Publishers, London. Its 58 short vignettes are based on Maugham’s travels along the Yangtze River from 1919 to 1920. Although later editions of the book added the subtitle “Sketches of Life in China,” there are actually only a few descriptions of the places he visited and the local Chinese people he met; rather, Maugham focuses on relaying his encounters with a range of Europeans living and working in the country. Maugham is quite critical of many of them and their lack of interest in, and sometimes disdain, for the country and its people, except for the extent to which their careers and pockets could benefit. His sketches highlight the difficulties that many expatriates encounter while living in a foreign culture.
Description
All’s Well That Ends Well was not popular during Shakespeare’s time, and is still considered to be a play without renown even today. It’s also one of the three “problem plays,” in that it deals with controversial social issues. Although it remains unloved by the public, productions have featured star-studded casts, including actresses like Dame Judi Dench and Claudie Blakley.
Helena, daughter of a skilled doctor and adopted child of the Countess of Rousillon, is in love with Bertram, the Countess’s son. Helena cures the King of France and is rewarded with a husband of her choice, so she selects Bertram. He contests the legitimacy of their marriage, and insists on demanding that she complete two tasks before he can consider their marriage legitimate: She must wear his family ring, and provide him an heir.
This Standard Ebooks production is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright’s 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition.
Description
A. J. Raffles and his friend “Bunny” Manders are the quintessential rich young socialites; but behind the high-living façade, they’ve exhausted their funds. There’s only one way to pay the bills: a secret double-life as criminals.
Raffles was E. W. Hornung’s biggest literary success, with the Raffles stories proving perennially popular. This volume was dedicated to his brother-in-law Arthur Conan Doyle, and in Raffles and Manders there is a clear relation to Holmes and Watson. The character’s popularity helped kickstart the “gentleman thief” genre, and it’s easy to see parallels to the later stories of Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc.
Description
After the events of The Amateur Cracksman A. J. Raffles is missing, presumed dead, and “Bunny” Manders is destitute but free after a stretch in prison for his crimes. So when a mysterious telegraph arrives suggesting the possibility of a lucrative position, Bunny has little option but to attend the given address.
Raffles was a commercial success for E. W. Hornung, garnering critical praise but also warnings about the glorification of crime. The Black Mask, published two years after his first collection of Raffles stories, takes a markedly more downcast tone, with the high-life escapades of the earlier stories curtailed by Raffles’ purported death.
Description
A biting satire of late 19th-century American imperialism, Captain Jinks, Hero was written by the American pacifist Ernest Howard Crosby. Crosby, who corresponded with Leo Tolstoy and advocated Tolstoy’s pacifist ideals in the United States, lambasts the American military and its involvement in the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion through the character of Captain Jinks, a jingoistic officer who embarks on a tragicomic quest to become a “perfect soldier.” The novel also satirizes the role of industrial and media interests in promoting war through the character of Jinks’s friend and companion Cleary, a yellow journalist who feeds sensational stories back to the home front at the behest of editors and monopolists.
Description
A middle-aged man named Lambert Strether is sent to Paris by his wealthy wife-to-be in order to convince her son Chad to return home to America and take over the lucrative family business. This turns out to be much easier said than done, as Strether finds Chad much better adapted to European life than anyone expected.
James’ characteristically dense prose is matched by a cast of subtly-realized characters who rarely say exactly what they mean. Widely regarded as one of James’ best novels, The Ambassadors explores themes of love, duty, and aging, all told through the eyes of a man who wonders if life hasn’t passed him by.
This ebook follows the 1909 New York Edition, with one important exception: Since 1950, it has been generally agreed that the New York Edition had incorrectly ordered the first two chapters of Book XI. This text follows the convention of most printings since then, and the chapters have been returned to what is believed to have been James’ intended order.
Description
Roger Gale, a media-monitoring business owner nearing retirement, observes life in early 20th century New York City through the eyes of his three daughters. The youngest, Laura, is a social butterfly always going to the latest excitements the city can offer. The middle, Edith, is a mother to four children, on whom she dotes. The oldest, Deborah, cares for her own “family,” tenement children and the poor trying to make it the new country they have made their home. Through each daughter, he sees the changing social order of New York in a new way.
Description
“Bunny” Manders is drawn to fill the void left by A. J. Raffles’ absence at the end of The Black Mask with untold stories of the past adventures. These tales are perhaps ones that Bunny is most ashamed of, but among the regrets lie threads of future happiness.
The public popularity of Raffles, fuelled by stage and film adaptations in the intervening years, lead to this continuation of his saga in 1905. A Thief in the Night, with the exception of the last two stories, is set in the same period as the events of The Amateur Cracksman.