Anna, a reserved and subtle woman of great integrity, lives with her overbearing and miserly father. Wooed for her money by the darkly handsome Henry Mynors, Anna courageously defies her father's wrathful indignation. But the complex passions aroused lead to tragedy and heartache. Set in the Potteries against a background of dour Wesleyan Methodism, "Anna of the Five Towns" is a brilliantly perceptive novel of provincial life in Victorian England.

Each volume in the Collector's Library series has a specially commissioned Afterword, brief biography of the author and a further reading list. The Afterword is by leading UK playwright, novelist and eminent Sherlockian, David Stuart Davies.

Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, contained twelve long untitled poems, but Whitman continued to expand it throughout his life.Whitman's poetry was unprecedented in its unapologetic joy in the physical and its inextricable link to the spiritual. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to him: "I am very happy in reading [Leaves of Grass], as great power makes us happy ... I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be."

A menagerie of observation, philosophy, musing, and storytelling, Shadowings is quirky and charming, not unlike its author, transplanted Westerner Lafcadio Hearn. In this work, Hearn takes us from an ancient Japanese legend of love and spirits to an intimate contemplation on fear to a philosophical study of feminine Japanese names. Applying both his keen aesthetic eye and his uncanny ability to translate feelings as well as words, Hearn awakens the intellect and spirit, and offering us a prime view not only into his beloved adopted country, but into humanity itself.Bohemian and writer PATRICK LAFCADIO HEARN (1850-1904) was born in Greece, raised in Ireland, and worked as newspaper reporter in the United States before decamping to Japan. He also wrote In Ghostly Japan (1899), and Kwaidon (1904).

Lawrence's first major novel was also the first in the English language to explore ordinary working-class life from the inside. Using the first edition text, which Lawrence approved, this edition also offers a fresh and stimulating introduction - particularly in its treatment of Lawrence's language and imagery.

We have all read a statement, (the authenticity of which I take leave to doubt entirely, for upon what calculations I should like to know is it founded ) -- we have all, I say, been favored by perusing a remark, that when the times and necessities of the world call for a Man, that individual is found. Numberless instances might be adduced to show that when a nation is in great want, the relief is at hand just as in the Pantomime (that microcosm) where when clown wants anything -- a warming-pan, a pump-handle, a goose, or a lady's tippet -- a fellow comes sauntering out from behind the side-scenes with the very article in question.

Thucydides (c. 460 B.C. - c. 395 B.C.) was a Greek historian and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides is considered the father of "scientific history," because of his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to the intervention of the gods. The History of the Peloponnesian War is the history of the 5th century B.C. struggle between Athens, a democratic state and sea power, and the states of the Peloponnese headed by Sparta, a conservative power with an efficient military force.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was an English essayist with Welsh heritage, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare (1807), which he produced along with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764-1847). Charles and Mary both suffered periods of mental illness, and Charles spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital during 1795. He was, however, already making his name as a poet. Despite Lamb's bouts of melancholia, both he and his sister enjoyed an active and rich social life. Their London quarters became a kind of weekly salon for many of the most outstanding theatrical and literary figures of the day. On her own, Mary Lamb published an epistolary work, Mrs Leicester's School (1809) which the poet Samuel Coleridge believed would and should be "acknowledged as a rich jewel in the treasury of our permanent English literature." Among their other famous works are: Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (1808) and Poetry for Children (1809).

1492: The Year Our World Began by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto traces modernity to its roots in the year 1492. It focuses on specific events of 1492 (including the Renaissance and voyages of Columbus) which Fernandez-Armesto views as crucial to the development of modern ways of thinking and the physical state of the world today. Exploring how the creation of the earliest surviving globe showed a world shrinking with advances in cartography as a result of exploration, Fernandez-Armesto shows how people, separated by millions of years of geographical change and evolution in terms culture and ecology, began to set out to chart the places they visited, shifting the balance of global power west and establishing a global trade which prefigured that of today, while China marked time. While civilizations were rediscovering one another, however, further divisions emerged as Granada, the last Muslim-ruled state in Western Europe, fell to Spanish Christians confining Islam to the southern shore of the Mediterranean and the Sahara. Meanwhile, Jews expelled from Spain were making their way to destinations around the Mediterranean and Russia was expanding North. With confessional, sovereign states on the rise and challenging the pluralistic empires of the past, ideological differences were more than ever becoming a pretext for war. Power and economic concerns were at the forefront in Florence and Rome, and science and secular clashed with the supernatural. 1492: The Year Our World Began explores a crucial, yet largely neglected point in history and demonstrates how events during this year and the surrounding period began the globalisation and hegemony of the West and the shaping of power relations which we see today.

The winter had been a hard one: extreme cold deep snow and violent winds. The Wang house had suffered greatly. The roof had fallen in weighed down by heavy snow. Then a hurricane had blown a wall over and Ming-li the son up all night and exposed to a bitter cold wind had caught pneumonia.

Until very recently it was supposed that the physical qualities of bodies, i.e. hardness, colour, density, transparency, and still more their chemical properties, must depend upon the nature of their elements, or upon their composition. It was tacitly received as a principle, that two bodies containing the same elements in the same proportion, must of necessity possess the same properties. We could not imagine an exact identity of composition giving rise to two bodies entirely different in their sensible appearance and chemical relations.

Jack was on fire to be off to Brindisi and see what was wrong.He made short work of his packing, and within an hour he wasdriving to Longhampton to catch the London express. He caught itwith scarcely two minutes to spare, and was soon whirling towardsthe great city. A short distance from Longhampton, he caught aglimpse of Rushmere School in the distance on its hill, and thestrip of heath country running up to the foot of the slope. Thisbrought to mind his adventure, which remained as mysterious anaffair as ever. The police had been most active, stations had beenwatched, inquiries had been made in every direction, but all to noresult. The Thugs had vanished and left no trace behind. But thethought of his encounter on the heath soon faded from Jack's mind.It was crushed out by the pressing question of the moment. What wasthe matter at Brindisi? Why had Risley cabled and not his father?Had something happened to his father? Jack felt wretchedly uneasy,for he and his father were bound together by no ordinary ties ofaffection.In the first place, he had, as far as he knew, no other livingrelation. His mother had been dead for many years, and his fatherwas the only close friend that Jack knew. Then the elder Haydon hadalways been a great hero in his son's eyes. His profession ofmining engineer had carried him into many wild corners of theworld, and the store of marvellous tales which he would pour forthfor the boy's delight had made Jack's holidays a time of intensepleasure. Mr. Haydon had always made a point, if it was possible,of keeping himself free for such times, and he and Jack had spentthe weeks joyously, until the day for return to school had become aBlack Monday indeed in the boy's eyes.

The sequel to "The Amateur Cracksman" finds A.J. Raffles up to his old tricks.

A Simple Story is one of those books which, for some reason or other, have failed to come down to us, as they deserved, along the current of time, but have drifted into a literary backwater where only the professional critic or the curious discoverer can find them out. "The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy;" and *where more blindly than in the republic of letters. If we were to inquire how it has happened that the true value of Mrs. Inchbald's achievement has passed out of general recognition, perhaps the answer to our question would be found to lie in the extreme difficulty with which the mass of readers detect and appreciate mere quality in literature. Their judgment is swayed by a hundred side-considerations which have *thing to do with art, but happen easily to impress the imagination, or to fit in with the fashion of the hour. The reputation of Mrs. Inchbald's contemporary, Fanny Burney, is a case in point. Every one has heard of Fanny Burney's *vels, and Evelina is still widely read. Yet it is impossible to doubt that, so far as quality alone is concerned, Evelina deserves to be ranked considerably below A Simple Story. But its writer was the familiar friend of the greatest spirits of her age; she was the author of one of the best of diaries; and her work was immediately and immensely popular. Thus it has happened that the name of Fanny Burney has maintained its place upon the roll of English *velists, while that of Mrs. Inchbald is forgotten.

A collection of short stories: The Ditch, Her Country Too, The Swallow, Only One of Them, The V.C, He That Loseth His Life Shall Find It, The Silver Stirrup, The Russian, Robina's Doll, Dundonald's Destroyer.

The train, which had roared through a withering gale of sleet all the way up from New York, came to a standstill, with many an ear-splitting sigh, alongside the little station, and a reluctant porter opened his vestibule door to descend to the snow-swept platform: a solitary passenger had reached the journey's end. The swirl of snow and sleet screaming out of the blackness at the end of the station-building enveloped the porter in an instant, and cut his ears and neck with stinging force as he turned his back against the gale. A pair of lonely, half-obscured platform lights gleamed fatuously at the top of their icy posts at each end of the station; two or three frost-encrusted windows glowed dully in the side of the building, while one shone brightly where the operator sat waiting for the passing of No. 33. The train itself was dark. Frosty windows, pelted for miles by the furious gale, white outside but black within, protected the snug travellers who slept the sleep of the hurried and thought not of the storm that beat about their ears nor wondered at the stopping of the fast express at a place where it had never stopped before. Far ahead the panting engine shed from its open fire-box an aureole of glaring red as the stoker fed coal into its rapacious maw. The unblinking head-light threw its rays into the thick of the blinding snow storm, fruitlessly searching for the rails through drifts denser than fog and filled with strange, half-visible shapes.

"In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim" by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a melodramatic American Novel about a group of people whose lives intertwine.

A helpful guide including chapters on the voice, planning speeches, proving and persuading

I do not quite know how it happened, my recollection of the whole matter ebbing in a somewhat clouded condition. I fancy I had gone somewhere on a botanizing expedition, but whether at home or abroad I don't know. At all events, I remember that I had take ...

My object in writing this book has been to present as many phases as possible of the strangely romantic story of the British Peerage, so that those who have not the time or facilities for exploring the library of books over which these stories are scattered, may be able, within the compass of a single volume, to review the panorama of our aristocracy, with its tragedy and comedy, its romance and pathos, its foibles and its follies, in a few hours of what I sincerely hope will prove agreeable reading.