Classic Literature

A Hesba Stretton classic.

The Night Before Christmas

Santa Claus lives in the Laughing Valley, where stands the big, rambling castle in which his toys are manufactured. His workmen, selected from the ryls, knooks, pixies and fairies, live with him, and every one is as busy as can be from one year's end to another. It is called the Laughing Valley because everything there is happy and gay. The brook chuckles to itself as it leaps rollicking between its green banks; the wind whistles merrily in the trees; the sunbeams dance lightly over the soft gra... more info>>

In Rough and Ready, a mining camp in California, Dick Spindler has found gold. He builds himself an impressive house and, decides to invite his family, who always thought he was a loser, to spend Christmas with him. Several surprises turn up, including a pair of orphans and an uninvited grass widow.

The first book that drew attention to Louisa May Alcott's writing was her vivid account of her own personal experiences as a nurse during the Civil War.

A ghostly and cautionary tale told in earlier times of a humble blacksmith and his family at Thanksgiving.

This is a digital adobe eBook version of the classic Shakespearian work Romeo and Juliet.

This is a digital adobe eBook version of the classic Shakespearian work The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

This is a digital copy of the classic radical political book which founded the ideas of communism and communistic expression. Karl Marx was the founder of this breed of political philosophy and this is his major work on the subject of communism.

A Rabindranath Tagore classic.

A J. M. Synge classic.

A Charles A. Swinburne classic.

A Spinoza classic.

To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born to him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his mother. So when in time a son was born the infant's feet were riveted together and he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd found the babe and tended him, and delivered him to another shepherd who took him to his master, the King or Corinth. Polybus being childless adopted the boy, who grew up believing that he was indeed the King's son.

Elsie ran to give her brother a welcome home kiss. Imagine her surprise when she draws back to find she has kissed instead a friend of her brother's from college. Will she ever live down her error? Will Elsie's embarrassment turn to love?

Louisa May Alcott's short romance is about two city debs who go to spend Christmas with their country cousins in Vermont.

A lawyer argues for love in "The Christmas Eve Suit." A young woman must choose between two men who go to fight with General Putnam in the Revolutionary War in "Suzie Rolliffe's Christmas." And in the final tale, the author draws from his own experience in "A Civil War Christmas" the story of a soldier's return.

During his twilight years, the French author Jules Verne (1828-1905) wrote two original sequels to books that had fired his own youthful imagination but which he felt to be incomplete: Johann Wyss's "Swiss Family Robinson" and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." "Arthur Gordon Pym" (1845) was only one of many Poe stories which Verne admired; no other single author had more impact on his writing. Verne acknowledged this debt in his only major piece of literary cri... more info>>

The conglomerate twins were brought on the the stage in Chapter I of the original extravaganza. Aunt Patsy Cooper has received their letter applying for board and lodging, and Rowena, her daughter, insane with joy, is begging for a hearing of it.

It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies--who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two--that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself. We will tell the story of Lizzie Greystock from the beginning, but we will not dwell over it at great length, as we might do if we loved her. She was the only child of old Admiral Greystock, who in the latter years of his life was much perplexed by the possession of a daughter.

The Golden Star," Homburg, was a humble hotel, not used by gay gamblers, but by modest travelers.

It will be necessary, for the purpose of my story, that I shall go back more than once from the point at which it begins, so that I may explain with the least amount of awkwardness the things as they occurred, which led up to the incidents that I am about to tell; and I may as well say that these first four chapters of the book--though they may be thought to be the most interesting of them all by those who look to incidents for their interest in a tale--are in this way only preliminary.

MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--I did promise to write an Introduction to these charming papers but an Introduction,--what is it?--a sort of pilaster, put upon the face of a building for looks' sake, and usually flat,--very flat. Sometimes it may be called a caryatid, which is, as I understand it, a cruel device of architecture, representing a man or a woman, obliged to hold up upon his or her head or shoulders a structure which they did not build, and which could stand just as well without as with them.

The 'Contrast' was the first American play ever performed in public by a company of professional actors. Several plays by native authors had been previously published, the more noteworthy being the 'Prince of Parthia,' a tragedy by Thomas Godfrey of Philadelphia, which was probably written, and was offered to Hallam's company in 1759 (but not pro- duced), and was printed in 1765, two years after the author's death.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. Judged by the standards of one century, the noblest characters of an earlier one lose much of their luster; judged by the standards of to-day, there is probably no illustrious man of four or five centuries ago whose character could meet the test at all points. But the character of Joan of Arc is unique.