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Description

Growth of the Soil was published in 1917 to universal acclaim. A mid- to late-career work for Hamsun, it was celebrated for its then-revolutionary use of literary techniques like stream of consciousness, and for its unadorned depiction of pastoral life. Its focus on the quotidian lives of everyday people has led scholars to classify it as a novel of Norwegian New Realism.

Isak, a man so strong and so simple that he echoes a primitive, foundational “everyman,” finds an empty plot of land in turn-of-the-century Norway, and builds a small home. He soon attracts a wife, Inger, whose harelip has led her to be ostracized from town life but who is nonetheless a hard and conscientious worker. Together the two earthy beings build a farm and a family, and watch as society and civilization grows and develops around them.

Isak and Inger’s toils sometimes bring them up against the burgeoning modernity around them, but curiously, the novel is not one driven by a traditional conflict-oriented plot. Instead, the steady progression of life on the farm, with its ups and downs, its trials and joys, makes the people and their growth the novel’s main propellant. While the humble, homespun protagonists occasionally come into conflict with the awe-inspiring forces of civilization, more often than not, those forces are portrayed as positive and symbiotic companions to the agrarian lifestyle.

Hamsun was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920 for Growth of the Soil, one of the rare instances in which the Nobel committee awarded a prize for a specific novel, and not a body of work. It has since come to be regarded as a classic of modernist, and Norwegian, literature.

Description

Framley Parsonage is the fourth novel in Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire series. Originally a serial, it was first published as a book in 1861, and it has since been praised for its unsentimental depiction of the lives of middle-class people in the mid-Victorian era.

As with the other books in the series, Framley Parsonage is set in the fictious English county of Barsetshire, and deals with the doings of a variety of families and characters who live in the region, several of whom have appeared in the previous books; but it primarily concerns the young Reverend Mark Robarts.

Robarts has been appointed as vicar of the parish of Framley through the patronage of Lady Lufton of Framley Court, the mother of his long-time friend Ludovic, now Lord Lufton. After he and his wife Fanny take up residence in Framley Parsonage, Robarts is led into the society of some loose-living aristocrats through his friendship with Ludovic. Robarts eventually finds himself weakly consenting to his name being included on a bill for a loan to one of his new connections, Sowerby. By so doing, he becomes liable for debts he cannot possibly satisfy.

An important secondary thread involves Mark Robarts’ sister Lucy, who after their father’s death comes to live with her brother’s family at the parsonage. Through them, she becomes acquainted with Lady Lufton and her son Ludovic, and romantic complications ensue.

Framley Parsonage was originally published anonymously in serial form in Cornhill Magazine, and such was its popularity that during its publication a hysterical young woman apparently tried to gain notoriety in her country town by claiming to be its author. “The real writer,” we are told, “dealt very gently with the pretender.”

Description

In Paris, surgeon Arthur Burdon and his fiancé are introduced to Oliver Haddo, a wealthy Englishman from an old family who claims to be a magician trained in the occult. At first they are unconvinced and irritated by Haddo’s boasts; however he soon demonstrates his powers in more and more fateful ways.

The character of Oliver Haddo is an unflattering caricature of the English occultist Alistair Crowley, whom Maugham had met while living in Paris. Crowley himself wrote a review in Vanity Fair in which he accused Maugham of plagiarizing various other novels, signing off as “Oliver Haddo.” Most critics dismissed these allegations.

Description

Betty Zane, published in 1903, was Zane Grey’s first novel. It tells the romanticized story of Grey’s great-great-aunt, who made a miraculous dash under fire to save a frontier fort from Indian attack.

Fort Henry sat on the site of present-day Wheeling, West Virginia. One of a series of fortifications built to protect frontier settlers, it was commanded by Colonel Ebenezer Zane, and was the center of a small community where Colonel’s brothers and his sister Betty lived. The fort survived two sieges by Native Americans, first in 1777 and again in 1782. In the 1782 siege the attacking tribes were joined by British soldiers; and it is this siege, and the events leading up to it, that are recounted in Betty Zane.

Grey claimed to derive the facts in his story from the personal notebook, preserved in his family, of his great-grandfather Ebenezer Zane, but it’s impossible for readers to distinguish historical fact, the supposed contents of the notebook, and the Grey’s own imagination. Certainly some aspects of the tale, like Betty’s romantic involvements, are entirely fictionalized. But equally certainly, other major aspects of the tale, in particular Betty’s heroism during the siege, come straight from the pages of history.

Description

What Is Art? is an 1897 philosophical treatise by Leo Tolstoy that lays out his philosophy of aesthetics. Rejecting notions of aesthetics that center around beauty, Tolstoy instead posits that art is defined by its role in transmitting feelings between human beings. Furthermore, he argues that the quality of art is not assessed by the pleasure it gives, but whether the feelings the art evokes align with the meaning of life revealed by a given society’s religious perception. In line with his spiritual views set out in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Tolstoy argues that the proper purpose of art is to transmit feelings of human unity and “to set up, in place of the existing reign of force, that kingdom of God, i.e. of love, which we all recognize to be the highest aim of human life.”

Tolstoy makes a number of unconventional aesthetic judgments in the course of the book, dismissing such works as Wagner’s operas, Romeo and Juliet, and his own past works like War and Peace and Anna Karenina as “bad art.” In turn, he praises such works as Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Hugo’s Les Misérables as “examples of the highest art, flowing from the love of God and the love of man.”

Description

Jeff Rand, a private detective, is skeptical when he is employed by Gladys Fleming to evaluate her recently acquired gun collection, which happens to contain a dark secret. The more facts he uncovers, the more interesting the story becomes. Gun dealers, butlers, wives and cops all become suspects in the investigation of a mysterious death. The book is rich with detailed descriptions of the many different guns that star in this tale. This is the only murder-mystery written by Piper, who was mostly known for his science fiction novels.

Description

The Dead Secret is Wilkie Collins’ fourth novel. It first appeared in serial form in Charles Dickens’ Household Words magazine during 1856. Like many of Collins’ books, it features incidents and themes which were considered to be sensational at the time; in this case, sex before marriage, illegitimacy, and fraud.

The novel opens with a scene at Porthgenna Tower, a mansion in Cornwall, where the lady of the house, Mrs. Treverton, is dying. On her deathbed, she tries to force her maidservant, Sarah Leeson, to swear that she will give a letter Mrs. Treverton has written to her husband, Captain Treverton, once she is dead. The letter reveals an important family secret in which Sarah is deeply involved and which she consequently is desperately unwilling to pass on. Mrs. Treverton succeeds in making Sarah swear not to destroy the letter or remove it from the house, but dies before making the young woman swear to give the letter to the Captain. Sarah therefore finds a place to conceal it within the house.

The rest of the novel deals with Rosamond, the Treverton’s daughter, who grows to adulthood and marries Leonard Franklin, a young man of a well-to-do family, who is afflicted with blindness. Franklin purchases Porthgenna Tower after the Captain’s death, and the couple plan to move into the property and renovate it. Doing so, however, means that they are likely to uncover the hidden letter concealing the family secret.

While critics don’t consider The Dead Secret to be one of Collins’ best novels, it contains some of the same elements of mystery and suspense as The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and much of his characteristic wry humor.

Description

The Return of Tarzan was first published in the pulp New Story Magazine between June and December of 1913, and later published as a novel in 1915.

The story picks up shortly after the events in the first book as Tarzan is traveling to France from the United States. While on the ship, he intervenes in the plots of a man named Nikolas Rokoff and his companion Alexis Paulvitch. Upon reaching Paris, Rokoff executes the first of many revenge plots, which plunge Tarzan into a series of adventures.

Description

Two close friends, Proteus and Valentine, are saying their goodbyes in the streets of Verona. Valentine plans to travel to Milan and discover the world, but Proteus wants to stay with Julia, a woman he loves. While in Milan, Valintine falls in love with the duke’s daughter, Sylvia, and plans to elope with her. Antonio, Proteus’ father, later orders his son to join Valentine in Milan. Before leaving, Proteus exchanges rings and vows of undying love with Julia. When Proteus enters the aristocratic courts of Milan, he instantly falls in love with Sylia and forgets all about Julia. The love triangle between Sylvia, Proteus, and Valentine will test the loyalty of friendship.

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

The baby of an English aristocratic family becomes orphaned in the equatorial African jungle, and is raised by apes. As he grows up he discovers he is human, and very different from his anthropoid companions. He learns and develops human traits, yet retains his primitive skills and physical prowess. As he comes into contact with other humans, conflict, adventure, wonder, and triumph result. To those he encounters, Tarzan becomes a symbol of the natural man, contrasting with the shortcomings and perfidies of human society.