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Description

Progress and Poverty, first published in 1879, was American political economist Henry George’s most popular book. It explores why the economy of the mid-to-late 1800s had seen a simultaneous economic growth and growth in poverty. The book’s appeal was in its balance of moral and economic arguments, challenging the popular notion that the poor, through uncontrolled population growth, were responsible for their own woes. Inspired by his years living in San Francisco and his own experience with privation, George argues instead that poverty had grown due to the increasing speculation and monopolization of land, as landowners had captured the increases in growth, investment, and productivity through the rising cost of rent.

To solve this, George proposes the complete taxation of the unimproved value of land, thus returning the value of land, created through location, to the community. This solution would incentivize individuals to use the land they own productively and remove the tendency to speculate upon land’s increasing value. George’s argument was profoundly liberal, as individuals retain the right to own land and enjoy the profits generated from production upon it.

Progress and Poverty was hugely popular in the 1890s, being outsold only by the Bible. It inspired the Single Tax Movement, and influenced a wide range of intellectuals and policymakers in the early 1900s including Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, and Winston Churchill.

Description

The young Vicomte de Marny rashly challenges a French official to a duel, and dies as a result. The Vicomte’s father, the ancient Duc de Marny, insists that his daughter, Juliette, swear an oath before God to seek revenge on the man who killed her brother. Years later, as the French Revolution rages, Juliette insinuates herself into the official’s household, and quickly discovers a way to anonymously accuse him before the National Convention. It will take all of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s ingenuity to rescue his friend from the guillotine.

I Will Repay is the first of the many sequels that Baroness Orczy wrote after the phenomenal success of the book and play versions of The Scarlet Pimpernel. In this first sequel, she leaves him mostly in the background until the denouement, when the Pimpernel once more must use all of his skills in disguise and subterfuge to rescue a friend and his household.

Description

In the third installment of her Scarlet Pimpernel stories, Baroness Orczy brings back Chauvelin, the French official unable to catch the Pimpernel in the first novel. This time he is more determined, more ruthless, and more devious. He plans to capture both the Pimpernel and his wife, threatening an entire town in the process. He has thought of every possibility, closed every loophole, anticipated every move of his arch-rival. It appears that at last the Pimpernel might have met his match.

Description

The Land That Time Forgot opens with the discovery near Greenland of a floating thermos flask containing a manuscript by castaway Tyler Bowen, Jr. The document recounts a series of adventures that starts with a sea battle against a German U-boat and ends on a mysterious island populated by hostile prehistoric animals and people.

The second part of the book, “The People That Time Forgot,” continues the story with the tale of Tom Billings, who has been sent on a mission to rescue Bowen after his manuscript was discovered. He flies solo over the mountainous cliffs that encircle the island and is attacked by a monstrous flying reptile, forcing him to crash-land. Billings then attempts to make his way on foot back to the rest of his party while contending with dangerous inhabitants from different stages of human development.

The final installment of the story, “Out of Time’s Abyss,” reveals what happened to Bradley, a crew member who was sent on a scouting expedition earlier in the story and was never heard from again.

This trilogy of short novels was originally published serially in 1918 in Blue Book Magazine. In 1924 they were published in a single volume by A. C. McClurg. The Burroughs fan community seems to fall into two camps about whether the story comprises three separate novellas, or whether it’s a single novel divided into three parts. This production follows the 1924 edition in combining the three into a single novel.

Description

Edith Nesbit was a popular children’s author of the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras in Britain. Though she was writing more than a century ago, her books nevertheless remain popular and are generally still in print.

The House of Arden was published in 1908. Like her other, perhaps better known tales, such as Five Children and It, the story takes quite ordinary children of the time and plunges them into fantastical adventures.

In this book, two children, with the interesting Saxon names of Edred and Elfrida, aged 10 and 12 respectively, discover that due to the death of a distant relative, young Edred is now Lord of Arden. The estate consists of not much more than a little money, a crumbling castle, and an attached house. An old retainer tells them of a legend regarding the Lord of Arden and a buried treasure. Naturally they are eager to locate the treasure, which may help them restore the castle. They discover a way to summon up the mascot of the House, a white mole or “mouldiwarp,” who enables them to travel back through time in search of the treasure.

Description

In the Scarlet Pimpernel’s fourth outing, he and his league want to free the orphaned Dauphin of France from his captors. But someone else has the same idea, although for very different, and selfish, reasons. In addition to trying to outflank his rival, the Pimpernel also has to deal with a member of his inner circle whose romance has caused him to disobey orders and put the entire plan in jeopardy. Completing his mission while once again escaping the clutches of his arch-enemy Chauvelin will push the Pimpernel to the breaking point.

Description

A young woman in 17th century Holland inadvertently overhears the details of a plot to kill a political figure. The principal figures in the plot, one of whom is her brother and another her former lover, hire an insolent English mercenary to kidnap her to get her out of the way until their deeds are done. From there very little goes according to plan.

For her fifth novel in the series, Baroness Orczy uses Franz Hals’ famous painting titled The Laughing Cavalier to build an elaborate backstory for the ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Description

Yama (The Pit) recounts the lives of a group of prostitutes living and working in Anna Markovna’s brothel in the town of K⸺. The women, subject to effective slavery through the removal of their papers and onerous debts, act out a scene of easy affability every evening for the part ignorant, part monstrous clients, while keeping secret their own pasts and wished-for futures.

The book was Kuprin’s attempt to denormalize the cultural ambiguity of the legal brothels of the time. His dedication—“to mothers and youths”—expresses his desire that there should no longer be a silent acceptance of the actions of the “fathers, husbands, and brothers.” The novel was notable for portraying the inhabitants of the brothels as living, breathing people with their own hopes and desires, not purely as a plot point or scenario.

The critical response was mixed: many found the subject matter beyond the pale. Kuprin himself placed his hopes on a favourable review from Leo Tolstoy, which didn’t come; but there was praise for Yama as both social commentary and warning, and an appreciation for Kuprin’s attempt to detail the everyday lives of his subjects.

The novel had a troubled genesis, with the first part taking nine years between initial proposal and first publication; the second and third parts followed five years later. It was a victim of the Russian censors who, tellingly, disapproved more of scenes involving officials visiting the brothels, than the brothels themselves. It was only later during preparations for an anthology of his work that an uncensored version was allowed to be released. This edition is based on the translation to English by Bernard Guilbert Guerney of that uncensored version, and was first published in 1922.

Description

The posh, English daughter of an Australian pastoralist is sent to Kuryong station to learn the ropes. At the same time, a search is underway across the desolate innards of regional New South Wales for the lost son of a wealthy uncle. These stories collide to give a humorous take on the values of family, marriage and hard work, set in the beautiful backdrop of the Australian Outback.

This was Banjo Paterson’s first novel after a string of widely celebrated poems written in the late 1800s.

Description

McTeague is an enormously strong but dim-witted former miner now working as a dentist in San Francisco towards the end of the nineteenth century. He falls in love with Trina, one of his patients, and shortly after their engagement she wins a large sum in a lottery. All is well until McTeague is betrayed and they fall into a life of increasing poverty and degradation.

This novel is often presented as an example of American naturalism where the behavior and experience of characters are constrained by “nature”—both their own heredity nature, and the broader social environment.

McTeague was published in 1899 as the first of Norris’s major novels.