Around the World in 80 Days (French: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is a classic adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in 1873. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager set by his friends at the Reform Club.
In the Wilds of Florida is a tale of an Irish schoolboy who leaves school and his struggling family in Ireland to come to America. He experiences a Florida where fighting still erupts between Cherokee and Seminole Indians, where white people are under threat of Indian attack, and the landscape is mostly swamp or plains of dense brush.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens's final novel was left unfinished before his death in 1871. Edwin Drood’s uncle, John Jasper, a choirmaster, is in love with his pupil and Drood’s fiancee Rosa Bud. She has also caught the eye of high-spirited and ill-tempered Neville Landless (who came from Ceylon with his twin sister Helena). When Drood is murdered, the killer must be found...that is if Drood is really dead.
Oliver Twist is Charles Dickens' second novel. It is about a boy named Oliver Twist, who escapes from a workhouse and meets a gang of pickpockets in London. The novel is one of Dickens's most well-known works, and has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations.
Great Expectations follows Pip's life expectations as he attempts to fit in with upper class society, while pining for the affection of Estella.
Main Street is a satirical novel about small-town life, and is notable for the presence of a strong female protagonist.
The Number Concept is an examination of the different cultural representations of numbers by the American mathematician Levi Leonard Conant, Ph.D.
The Time Machine is a book by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895
The book’s protagonist is an amateur inventor or scientist living in London identified simply as The Time Traveller. Having demonstrated to friends using a miniature model that time is a fourth dimension, and that a suitable apparatus can move back and forth in this fourth dimension, he completes the building of a larger machine capable of carrying himself. He then immediately sets off on a journey into the future.
The Time Traveller details the experience of time travel and the evolution of his surroundings as he moves through time. While travelling through time, his machine allows him to observe the changes of the outside world in fast motion. He observes the sun and moon traversing the sky and the changes to the buildings and landscape around him as he travels through time. His machine produces a sense of disorientation to its occupant, and a blurring or faintness of the surroundings outside the machine.
Clotel; or, The President's Daughter is a novel by William Wells Brown (1815 – 1884), a fugitive from slavery and abolitionist and was published in London, England in December 1853. It gained notoriety amid the unconfirmed rumors regarding Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. Brown was still considered someone else's legal property within the borders of the United States at the time of its publication. It is considered to be the first novel written by an African American. The book follows the experiences of three generations of women during slavery.
Brown used the injustices of slavery to demonstrate the destructive effects it had on the African American family, most significantly the so–called tragic mulatto. Brown had escaped from slavery in Kentucky while still in his youth, and became active on the anti–slavery circuit.
Ethan Frome is a tragic novel about the unrequited love between Ethan Frome and his wife's cousin, Mattie Silver.
This novel has elements in common with gothic fiction, realism, modernism, romance, and tragedy.
Jane Eyre is a classic novel by Charlotte Brontë which was published in 1847. Jane Eyre, an orphan, must find her own way in the world while learning about friendship, family, love, trust, societal roles--and how to deal with dark secrets.
The Jungle is a novel by American author and socialist Upton Sinclair. It describes the life of a family of Lithuanian immigrants working in Chicago’s Union Stock Yards at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, complete absence of social security, scandalous living and working conditions, and generally utter hopelessness prevalent among the have-nots, which is contrasted with the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of the haves. The sad state of turn-of-the-century labor is placed front and center for the American public to see suggesting that something needed to be changed to get rid of American “wage slavery”. The novel is also an important example of the “muckraking” tradition begun by journalists such as Jacob Riis. Sinclair wanted to show how the mainstream parties of American politics, already being tied into the industrial-capitalist machine, offered little means for progressive change. As such the book is deeply supportive of values and criticisms held by Communism, a movement still in its infancy at the time.
A shepherd boy falsely cries “wolf” twice just to get excitement from the villiage people, but when a real wolf comes and he cries “wolf” again, no one comes to his rescue. moral: no one believes a liar even when he tells the truth.
Following the birth of her child, the narrator is cared for by her physician husband at a country estate.
Excerpt from Frederick Douglass' speech outlining the hypocritical nature of slavery in the United States of America.
The author shares some of his Christmas experiences and memories regarding the meaning of the Christmas tree.
The poet celebrates spring, as nature recovers from the harshness of winter.
This poem describes a haunted scene after a battle and how the flow of life has won.
The poem describes the funeral of a Native American chief.
Flowers contain all the beauty, love, hope, death, rebirth that is life, if one but looks closely.
Friendly ghosts cheer the narrator with their nocturnal visits.
The speaker hails and welcomes the coming of Night.
The poet muses upon seeing Mars in the night sky, and contemplates how Mars’s steadfastness reminds him to endure life’s hardships.
The poet ruminates on the coming of winter.
Live fully; get out and do things. The purpose of life is to live it.
Death comes to gather flowers for saints to wear.
A man protects his lady while she sleeps.
The natural world is the source of poetry.
The poet ruminates upon the morning sun shining on the woods and hills. He encourages readers to spend more time in nature to soothe their souls.
This is a poem about life from the focus of a widowed father and a wage earner (smithy) who works hard and steadily, earning from his effort.
The poet sees the differences in nature in winter, but still values winter.
A proud seaman refuses to heed warnings of a storm. As the weather worsens, he ties his daughter to the mast for safety, but soon the father and crew are killed in the icy storm. The ship then wrecks on Norman’s Woe, killing the daughter as well.