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The 120 Days of Sodom, also known as the School of Libertinism, is described by the author as the most impure tale that has ever been told since our world began. The novel tells the story of four wealthy male libertines who resolve to experience the ultimate sexual gratification in orgies. To do this,...

For years I had been preoccupied with thoughts of love—and by love I mean a noble and sensuous passion, absorbing the energies of the soul, fulfilling destiny, and reducing all that has gone before it to the level of a mere prelude. And that afternoon in autumn, the eve of my twenty-first birthday, I was more deeply than ever immersed in amorous dreams.

The book explains what utilitarianism is, why it is the best theory of ethics, defends it against a wide range of criticisms and misunderstandings. Though heavily criticized both in Mill's lifetime and in the years since, Utilitarianism did a great deal to popularize utilitarian ethics and was 'the most...

The gothic story is narrated by a young woman Laura preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. Laura lives in a picturesque and solitary castle amid an extensive forest in Styria. Her father is a wealthy English widower retired from service to the Austrian Empire.

High above the city, on a tall column, stands the statue of the Happy Prince. He is gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he has two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glows on his sword-hilt. He is very much admired by the town officials yet a lot of poor people suffer here. One...

We have already discussed the first causes of nature, and all natural motion, also the stars ordered in the motion of the heavens, and the physical element-enumerating and specifying them and showing how they change into one another-and becoming and perishing in general. There remains for consideration...

The Town Traveller is one of Gissing's novels which earned him more income during his lifetime than most of his other novels. The story is full of life and descriptive detail. It revolves around life of town traveller Gammon, just the sort of quarter-educated that Gissing usually despises.

I offer here some of the essays that I have written in the course of the past ten years. While I was collecting them and (quite patiently) reading them again, I found that a few of them were in direct reference to the moments at which they were severally composed. It was clear that these must have...

A cultivated poor young woman Emily Hood from a small town in the north of England works as a governess in a wealthy country family. She falls in love with her employer's son, Wilfrid Athel, and the two are engaged. However, during a visit to her parents' home, she is confronted by her father's employer, Dagworthy, who threatens to expose her father as a thief unless Emily marries him.

Eve's Ransom is the story of a mechanical draughtsman named Maurice Hilliard, who comes into some money, which enables him to live without working. As part of his resulting travels, he meets and falls in love with Eve Madeley, a book keeper.

The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus or Theologico-Political Treatise was one of the most controversial texts of the early modern period. It was a preemptive defense of Spinoza's later work, Ethics, published posthumously, for which he anticipated harsh criticism.

Genoa in 1547. This commercial center had gained its independence from France as well as a new prince through the actions of Andrea Doria 19 years previously. But the Doge Doria is now an old man 80 years old and there are fears that his nephew, Gianettino Doria, will be his successor. Among the Genoese...

Our deepest need, always, for any ideal view or for any ideal life, is faith in the reality of the spiritual, faith in a God who can save us from being at constant war with ourselves. We all need a God, who can make rational and consistent our deepest longings, aspirations, and purposes; who can save...

Much Ado About Nothing, one of Shakespeare's best comedies combining elements of robust hilarity with more serious meditations on honour, shame, and court politics. The story follows two pairs of lovers with different takes on romance.