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Description
Arkady, a university graduate, returns from St. Petersburg to his father’s estate with his mentor Bazarov—a nihilist.
Fathers and Children (also known as Fathers and Sons) is a novel written in 1862 by Russian writer Ivan Turgenev and published in Moscow by The Russian Messenger.
The main theme of the novel is the conflict between two generations—the “fathers,” the liberal serf owners, and the “children,” nihilists who reject their authority and traditions.
Turgenev’s novel also helped popularize the term “nihilism,” especially after the word’s use by an influential Russian nihilist movement in the 1860s.
Despite being harshly criticized in Russia, the novel was very well received in Europe, being praised by influential novelists like Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, making it the first Russian novel to gain recognition in the Western literary world.
Description
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe’s classic interpretation of the Dr. Faustus legend, was first performed in London by the Admiral’s Men around 1592. It is believed to be the first dramatization of this classic tale wherein Faustus, a German scholar, trades his soul to Lucifer in return for magical powers and the command over the demon Mephistopheles. Faustus at first seeks to expand his knowledge of the universe, but soon finds that a deal with the devil brings little satisfaction. All too soon the contract expires, and Faustus is faced with the prospect of eternal damnation.
Two principal versions of this play exist, one based on the 1604 quarto (the A text) and a longer, emended version published in 1616 (the B text). This edition is based on Havelock Ellis’s 1893 edition of the 1604 text (the A text is currently believed by many scholars to be the closest to Marlowe’s original).
Often considered to be Marlowe’s greatest work, Doctor Faustus builds on the ancestry of the medieval morality play, but brings a more sympathetic view to the straying hero than those precursors to Elizabethan drama, and even ventures to pose questions of common Christian doctrine. This is the last play written by Marlowe before he was killed in a Deptford tavern.
Description
Written in the style of a memoir, My Ántonia chronicles Jim Burden’s friendship with the daughter of a Czech immigrant family. Recently orphaned, he moves west to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. Riding the same train is the Shimerda family, who are also on their way to settle in the area. The Shimerdas have a difficult life as pioneers: living in a sod house, working the fields, and running out of food in the winter. Jim soon becomes smitten with Ántonia, the eldest daughter, as they grow up and explore the landscape around them together. Through his eyes, we see both how she shapes the land around her and is shaped by the rigors of poverty.
Similarly to Jim, Willa Cather spent her early years in Nebraska but most of her adult life in Eastern cities. She pays homage to her homeland with her Prairie Trilogy of novels: O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. They are tinged with her characteristic straightforward language, reverence for nature, and nostalgia, even as she acknowledges the hardships of the past.
Published in 1918 to great enthusiasm, My Ántonia is considered one of Cather’s finest works and a defining point in her identity as a writer.
Description
While watching a film, Véronique d’Hergemont spots her childhood signature mysteriously written on the side of a hut in the background of a scene. Her visit to the location of the film shoot deepens the mystery, but also provides further clues that point her towards long-lost relations and a great secret from ancient history: a secret that will require the services of a particular man to unravel.
The Secret of Sarek was published in the original French in 1919, and in this English translation in 1920. It was Maurice Leblanc’s first Arsène Lupin novel written after the Great War, and its impact on Leblanc is palpable: the novel has a much darker tone than earlier works, and even the famous cheery charm of Lupin is diluted. The result is a classic horror story, bringing a new dimension to the series.
Description
Daisy Ashford was just nine years old when she penned (or rather, penciled) The Young Visiters in her notebook. As an adult, she found the manuscript along with other childhood writings and showed them to her literary friends for a laugh. They were so delighted that they passed them around their circle. The unexpected result was a publishing deal, with J. M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, writing the preface. So clever was the book that some assumed Barrie himself had written the entire thing as an elaborate hoax.
The story’s “hero” is Alfred Salteena, a polite but bumbling man who hopes to learn the ways of the elite. He is in love with a younger woman, Ethel, but a love triangle with his friend Bernard soon emerges. The characters attend “sumshious” balls, stay in lavish “compartments,” and wear elaborate “get ups,” all of it rendered in Ashford’s original childish spelling. The story reads like a pastiche of high society and even a parody of the Victorian novel.
The Young Visiters was published in 1919 and was reprinted eighteen times in that year alone. It has been adapted into a play, a musical, and multiple film versions. Ashford’s other juvenile writings were later published, including The Hangman’s Daughter, a short novel she considered her finest work. As an adult, she did not continue to write.
Description
First performed in 1610, The Alchemist is one of Ben Jonson’s greatest comedies. Written for the King’s Men—the acting company to which Shakespeare belonged—it was first performed in Oxford because the playhouses in London were closed due to the plague. It was an immediate success and has remained a popular staple ever since.
The play centers around a con man, his female accomplice, and a roguish butler who uses his master’s house to gull a series of victims out of their money and goods. Jonson uses the play to satirize as many people as he can—pompous lords, greedy commoners, and self-righteous Anabaptists alike—as his three con artists proceed to bilk everyone who comes to their door. They don multiple roles and weave elaborate tales to exploit their victims’ greed and amass a small fortune. But it all comes to a sudden, raucous end when the master unexpectedly returns to London and all the victims gather to try and reclaim their property.
Description
The fortunes of Don Luis Perenna seem set to only increase after the will of his friend, Cosmo Mornington, is read. Perenna stands to benefit by one million francs if he finds the true heir, and by one hundred million if they can’t be found. But after both a detective and a potential recipient of the fortune die in the in the same way as Mornington, Perenna (alias Arsène Lupin) must fight to prove his innocence and discover the real murderer.
The Teeth of the Tiger was published in this English translation in 1914, but wasn’t available in the original French until its serialization in Le Journal in 1920. In the timeline of the series, The Teeth of the Tiger is set after the events of 813, and continues with the rebalancing of Lupin from a god-like genius to a fallible, albeit brilliant, man.
Description
My Brilliant Career is a classic Australian work published in 1901 by Stella Miles Franklin, with an introduction by Henry Lawson. A thinly-veiled autobiographical novel, it paints a vivid and sometimes grim picture of rural Australian life in the late 19th Century.
Sybylla Melvyn is the daughter of a man who falls into grinding poverty through inadvised speculation before becoming a hopeless drunk unable to make a living from a small dairy farm. Sybylla longs for the intellectual things in life such as books and music. She wants to become a writer and rebels against the constraints of her life. For a short period she is allowed to stay with her better-off relatives, and there she attracts the attentions of a handsome and rich neighbour, Harold Beecham. The course of true love, however, does not run smoothly for this very independent young woman.
The author, like many other women writers of the time, adopted a version of her name which suggested that she was male in order to get published. Today, the Miles Franklin Award is Australia’s premier literary award, with a companion award, the Stella, open only to women authors.
My Brilliant Career was made into a well-regarded movie in 1979. Directed by Gillian Armstrong, it features Judy Davis as Sybylla and Sam Neil as Harry Beecham.
Description
Commentaries on the Gallic War describes the conflicts between Rome and the region of Gaul in western Europe, as well as the Germanic peoples who lived to the east of the river Rhine, and Britain to the north, in the later years of the Roman republic.
Despite being written in the 3rd person, the commentaries are the memoirs of Julius Caesar himself, and offer a unique insight into these events.
Before the Gallic war began, the Romans had already conquered the region known as Provincia Nostra (literally: “our province”), which is now Languedoc and Provence in the south of France.
Julius Caesar had been one of the two consuls elected in the year 59 BC. The consuls held the highest political office in the Roman republic, but their terms only lasted a year. When his consulship came to an end, Caesar retained power through the position of proconsul, governing Provincia Nostra and two other provinces. This provided Caesar with the necessary command to conduct the military campaigns in Gaul.
Caesar’s victories in Gaul had huge repercussions on the future of Rome: the related work, Commentaries on the Civil War, documents the ensuing conflict between Caesar and Pompey that ultimately led to the end of the Roman republic and the beginning of the Roman empire.
Description
Trying to escape from her boring life, Hortense Daniel meets the mysterious Prince Rénine (or should we say Arsène Lupin?) who enlists her help to solve eight mysteries, starting with one that is for her very close to home. The pair’s travels take them across northern France as they help ease the path of true love, bring thieves and murderers to justice, and eventually to recover something very dear to Hortense’s heart.
The Eight Strokes of the Clock is an Arsène Lupin novel by any other name, with Maurice Leblanc admitting as much in an opening note. Set in the early days of the character’s history, this collection of mysteries has the hallmarks of classic Lupin: a fervent desire to impress, dazzling jumps of logic and an ambivalent belief that the law can provide justice. This English translation was published in 1922 in the same year it was being serialized in France; it was published in novel form there a year later.