The Floating Press imprint: 2252 books

G. K. Chesterton said of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson that he "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins." This collection of Stevenson's essays includes: On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places, An Apology for Idlers, Aes Triplex, Talk and Talkers,...

It may be hard to believe in the post-"Sex and the City" era, but less than 100 years ago, women had a hard time being taken seriously and often didn't have the autonomy and freedom that they deserved. In this fascinating series of talks, famed theologian and suffragette Maude Royden outlines the history...

Miles Franklin wrote My Brilliant Career as a romance to entertain her friends. It depicts the poor, intelligent Sybylla who cannot accustom herself to her family's reduced circumstances. She is given a reprieve and sent to her Grandmother's grand house, where she mingles with the best rural society,...

Over the course of his career, John Kendrick Bangs gained prominence as one of the most beloved humor writers of his era. In this charming collection of short stories, Bangs muses on the emergence of the suburban middle class in the United States with his trademark wit and humanity.

In his career as a newspaper reporter, British author Hall Caine often traveled to engage in on-the-ground documentation of important world events. His experiences on the battlefields of World War I were documented in a breathtaking series of articles that are reproduced in this volume.

This series of three novellas is unified by an overarching motif: in all three tales, a mysterious secret society known as The Thirteen is at work behind the scenes. The men in the group have pledged eternal loyalty to each other, and if any member ever finds himself in peril, it is the sworn duty of...

Travel through the genteel avenues and gritty slums of turn-of-the-century London in this dazzling travelogue from Charles William Heckethorn. Rather than focusing solely on the affluent neighborhoods filled with high-born aristocrats, Heckethorn catalogs the city as a whole in an ambitious, all-encompassing vision.

Though Henry James is best remembered as a titan of nineteenth-century American literature and an important innovator in the domain of literary realism, he was also a key figure in the literary criticism of the period and helped to shape the era's critical sensibility. In this fascinating volume, James...

William Dean Howells' second collection of poetry was published in 1873, and includes the best work from his early period. In the long poem "Forlorn," a man is brought to his knees by unrequited love; "The Pilot's Story" is a stirring narrative of the American Civil War.

This collection brings together two of William Dean Howells' earliest full-length dramas. A Counterfeit Presentment recounts an out-of-the-ordinary encounter that takes place in a hotel lobby. In The Parlour Car, Howells blends his trademark brand of social realism with a more traditional comedy of manners.

As a prominent novelist, critic and editor, William Dean Howells played an essential role in shaping the American literary sensibility of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly the shift toward naturalism and realism. In this, his most widely read series of essays on literature, Howells lays out his view of the superiority of realistic fiction.

A medium is a person who acts as a conduit between the physical world of mortals and the spiritual realms that lie beyond what our senses can perceive. In Genuine Mediumship: The Invisible Powers, esoterica expert Swami Bhakta Vishita offers a philosophical discussion of the spiritual laws that make...

The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons is a short pamphlet by Henry Steel Olcott. It was first published in 1912 as number fifteen in the series of Adyar Pamphlets released by the Theosophical Publishing House.

Best known for his inspirational essay "A Message to Garcia," philosopher Elbert Hubbart wrote widely on a diverse range of topics, many of which dealt with the best ways to find happiness and fulfillment. This volume collects a series of Hubbart's writing on self-help concepts and ideas, with an emphasis...