A retelling of Cupid and Psyche, based on its telling in a chapter of The Golden Ass of Apuleius. This story had haunted Lewis all his life, because he realized that some of the main characters' actions were illogical. As a consequence, his retelling of the story is characterized by a highly developed character, the narrator, with the reader being drawn into her reasoning and her emotions. The first part of the book is written from the perspective of Psyche's older sister Orual, as an accusation against the gods. The story is set in the fictive kingdom of Glome, a primitive city-state whose...
Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin after his son, Christopher Robin Milne, and various characters inspired by his son's stuffed animals, most notably the bear named Winnie-the-Pooh. Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed bear, originally named "Edward", was renamed "Winnie-the-Pooh" after a Canadian black bear named Winnie (after Winnipeg), which was used as a military mascot in World War I, and left to London Zoo during the war. "The pooh" comes from a swan called "Pooh". E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son's teddy,...
When executive Victor Dean dies from a fall down the iron staircase at Pym's Publicity, a posh London ad agency, Lord Peter Wimsey goes undercover to investigate. Before his tragic demise, the victim had tried to warn Mr. Pym, the firm's owner, about some scandalous behavior involving his employees. Posing as a new copywriter, Wimsey discovers that Dean was part of an unsavory crowd at Pym's whose recreational habits link them to the criminal underworld. With time running out and the body count rising, Wimsey must rush to find the truth before his identity is discovered and a determined...
The Abolition of Man is a 1943 book by C. S. Lewis. It is subtitled "Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools," and uses that as a starting point for a defense of objective value and natural law, and a warning of the consequences of doing away with or "debunking" those things. It defends science as something worth pursuing but criticizes using it to debunk values—the value of science itself being among them—or defining it to exclude such values. The book was first delivered as a series of three evening lectures at King's College,...
Little House in the Big Woods takes place in 1871 and introduces us to four-year-old Laura, who lives in a log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. She shares the cabin with her Pa, her Ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their lovable dog, Jack. Laura Ingalls Wilder, née Laura Ingalls, (born February 7, 1867, Lake Pepin, Wisconsin, U.S.—died February 10, 1957, Mansfield, Missouri), American author of children’s fiction based on her own youth in the American Midwest. Laura Ingalls grew up in a family that moved frequently from one part of the American frontier to another. Her...
Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time—has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Widely considered The Great American Novel, and often remembered for its epic film version, Gone With the Wind explores the depth of human passions with an intensity as bold as its setting in the red hills of Georgia. A superb piece of storytelling, it vividly depicts the drama of the Civil War and...
The honest, dreadful, heart-breaking story of a Negro childhood and youth, as set down by that rarely gifted American author, Richard Wright.--Dorothy Canfield Fisher....
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful but love-starved Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love. Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be Of Human Bondage, a semiautobiographical novel that deals with the life of the main character Philip...
The essays with publication dates are: Politics and the English language (1946) Politics vs. Literature: an examination of Gulliver's Travels (1946) The prevention of literature (1946) Why I write (1946) Writers and Leviathan (1948) Poetry and the microphone (1943) Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), who used the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. Orwell wrote literary criticism,...
L'Étranger est le premier roman d’Albert Camus, paru en 1942. Il prend place dans la tétralogie que Camus nommera « cycle de l’absurde » qui décrit les fondements de la philosophie camusienne : l’absurde. Jugé, reconnu coupable de meurtre avec préméditation, condamné à mort et exécuté, on ne saura jamais pourquoi Meursault a tué. Il assiste à son procès comme si c'était un autre qu'on jugeait. Une profonde réflexion sur l'être et la vie. Albert Camus (7 November, 1913—4 January 1960) was a French-Algerian author, journalist, and playwright best known for his absurdist works The Stranger...
Anne leaves Green Gables and her work as a teacher in Avonlea to pursue her original dream (which she gave up in Anne of Green Gables) of taking further education at Redmond College in Nova Scotia. Gilbert Blythe and Charlie Sloane enroll as well, as does Anne's friend from Queen's Academy, Priscilla Grant. During her first week of school, Anne befriends Philippa Gordon, a beautiful girl whose frivolous ways charm her. Philippa (Phil for short) also happens to be from Anne's birthplace of Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. The girls spend their first year in boardinghouses and decide to set up house...
Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. . . . Orwell served as a private, a corporal (cabo) and—when the informal command structure of the militia gave way to a conventional hierarchy in May 1937—as a lieutenant, on a provisional basis, in Catalonia and Aragon from December 1936 until June 1937. In June 1937, the leftist political party with whose militia he served (the POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, an anti-Stalinist communist party) was declared an illegal organisation, and Orwell was...
King Caspian is now well on in years, and has a son and heir, Prince Rilian. Rilian, however, disappeared from Narnia under mysterious and sinister circumstances, and has been missing for some years. He must be found. Clive Staples or C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a British literary scholar and novelist. He was a fellow of Magdalen College, a prestigious school at Oxford University. His strong religious background influenced such books as "The Problem of Pain" and "The Screwtape Letters". He is better known for his adult science fiction trilogy: "Out of a Silent Planet", "Perelandra", and "That...
"The Marching Morons" is a look at a far future in which the world's population consists of five billion idiots and a few million geniuses—the precarious minority of the "elite" working desperately to keep things running behind the scenes. In his introduction to The Best of C.M. Kornbluth, Pohl states that "The Marching Morons" is a direct sequel to "The Little Black Bag": it is easy to miss this, as "Bag" is set in the contemporary present while "Morons" takes place several centuries from now, and there is no character who appears in both stories. The titular black bag in the first story is...
"It is a very important story," Professor Lewis comments, "because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began." Two children, Polly and Digory, are spending their summer in London. But a chance encounter with Digory's Uncle Andrew takes them far from that city... C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a British literary scholar and novelist. He was a fellow of Magdalen College, a prestigious school at Oxford University. His strong religious background influenced such books as "The Problem of Pain" and "The Screwtape Letters". He is better known for...
