A Word To The Wise: 89 books

In An International Episode, Henry James introduces his readers to his bi-national world of love and nostalgia. Like in many of his novels, the books main concern is about the interaction and the cultural differences between the Old World and the New World. Two British gentlemen visit the US and meet...

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) who was a gifted Bengali Renaissance man, distinguishing himself as a philosopher, social and political reformer and a popular author in all literary genres. He was instrumental in an increased freedom for the press and influenced Gandhi and the founders of modern India....

Areopagitica is a revolutionary pamphlet written by the renowned seventeenth-century poet John Milton, author of the eternal Paradise Lost. In this work, Milton addresses the English Parliament of the time to complain about censorship and defend freedom of speech and expression. Written amid the English...

Jerome K Jerome had an early life of poverty exacerbated by the death of his parents in his early teens helped to cruelly mould the young Jerome. After early stints on the railways, as an actor, a journalist, a school teacher, a writer and a solicitors clerk he had some minor success with a collection...

William Makepeace Thackeray is a nineteenth-century English novelist born in Calcutta, India. He studied art in London and Paris and worked as a journalist before moving to storytelling. He published many stories in newspapers prior to the release of his satirical masterpiece Vanity Fair in 1847. His...

Published in 1838, Thomas De Quinceys The Avenger is a Gothic story of bloodshed, cruelty and religious authoritarianism. It centers around the character of John Williams, a London serial killer who brutally massacred seven people in the 1810s. By and large, the book represents De Quinceys aesthetic...

In this volume we venture to the East. To met a writer who speaks a common language of love and mysticism which continues to convey valuable insights into universal themes in contemporary society. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) who was a gifted Bengali Renaissance man, distinguishing himself as a philosopher,...

Washington Irving was born on April 3, 1783. He began to be published in 1802 with a series of observational letters. In 1815 the family business required that he move to England, the business failed but Irving decided to say in England and in 1819 published his first international success The Sketch...

In this foundational classic play, Christopher Marlowe beautifully retells the legend of Doctor Faustus in a masterful combination of verse and prose. The celebrated moral of the play is about how excessive ambition and unlimited lust for knowledge and power lead to self-destruction and damnation. The...

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born June 24, 1842 was one of the great American short story writers though his talents extended to Journalism and as a critic. With the motto Nothing matters it can be safely assumed that no one was free from his scathing viewpoint. As a writer he was distinctive. He would...

Round the Sofa is the title of a two-volume collection of short stories by the famous nineteenth-century English novelist and writer Elizabeth Gaskell. It includes My Lady Ludlow, The Half-Brothers and An Accursed Race. The latter is in the form of a historical essay that condemns the racism and the...

In this volume we venture to the East. To met a writer who speaks a common language of love and mysticism which continues to convey valuable insights into universal themes in contemporary society. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) who was a gifted Bengali Renaissance man, distinguishing himself as a philosopher,...

In this volume we venture to the East. To met a writer who speaks a common language of love and mysticism which continues to convey valuable insights into universal themes in contemporary society. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) who was a gifted Bengali Renaissance man, distinguishing himself as a philosopher,...

Saki is the penname of the British writer Hector Hugh Munro. In The Unbearable Bassington, he tells the story of the whimsical Francesca Bassington, an upper middle class woman whose main concerns in life are her modest possessions and the career and marriage of her only son, Comus. The latter is portrayed...