A Christmas Mystery – An Inspiring Story of Three Wise Men in Modern Setting “I cannot tell how the truth may be: I say the tale as ‘twas said to me.” “I heard it. I felt it. It was like the beating of wings.” Frontispiece “I told you the place was uncanny.” Instinctively they all […]
François Rabelais (1494-1553) was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor and humanist. He is regarded as an avant-garde writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, dirty jokes and bawdy songs. As a doctor, he used his spare time to write and publish humourous pamphlets which were critical of established authority and stressed his own perception of […]
Pearl) Zane Grey (1872-1939) was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and pulp fiction that presented an idealized image of the rugged Old West. He became especially interested in the West in 1907, after joining a friend on an expedition to trap mountain lions in Arizona. Grey wrote steadily, but it […]
You know how certain kinds of music will beat everything out of your consciousness except a wild delirium of joy; how love of a woman will take up every cranny of space in your being, -and fill the universe beside, -so that people who are not en rapport with the strains that delight you, or […]
1903 edition of popular stories by the British scholar, librarian, biographer and poet.
Edward Clodd (1840-1930) was an English banker, writer and anthropologist. He cultivated a very wide circle of literary and scientific friends, who periodically met at Whitsun gatherings at his home at Aldeburgh, Suffolk. He was an early follower of the work of Charles Darwin and had personal acquaintance with Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer. He […]
William Crossing (1847-1928) was a writer and documenter of Dartmoor and Dartmoor life. His earliest literary efforts were in the direction of fiction – ‘thrilling romances, ‘ composed for the delectation of his school-fellows. His first essay in poetry was at the age of fourteen, when a poem written by him appeared in the pages […]
James Edward Preston Muddock also known as ‘Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock’ and ‘Dick Donovan’ (1843-1934) was a prolific British journalist and author of mystery and horror fiction. For a time his detective stories were as popular as those of Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1889 and 1922 he published nearly 300 detective and mystery stories. At […]
Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (who wrote under the pseudonym Mrs. Whitney) (1824-1906) was an American poet and writer of books for girls. She started on her writing career in her thirties; after a period producing poems and stories for local journals, she published her first book Mother Goose for Grown Folks in 1859. She wrote […]
Rev. Thomas Firminger Thiselton-Dyer, MA, Oxon (1848-1928) was an English writer of popular non-fiction books, including British Customs: Past and Present, The Folk-Lore of Plants, and perhaps most famously, Strange Pages from Family Papers, which was considered a masterpiece of popular historical writing. He was particularly admired for his ability to couple in-depth research with […]
William Morris (1834-1896) was an English artist, writer, socialist and activist. He was one of the principal founders of the British arts and crafts movement, best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction and a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain. The Earthly Paradise (1860) was […]
William Morris (1834-1896) was an English artist, writer, socialist and activist. He was one of the principal founders of the British arts and crafts movement, best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction and a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain. The Earthly Paradise (1860) was […]
William Morris (1834-1896) was an English artist, writer, socialist and activist. He was one of the principal founders of the British arts and crafts movement, best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction and a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain. The Earthly Paradise (1860) was […]
Donald A. Mackenzie (1873-1936) was a Scottish journalist and prolific writer on religion, mythology and anthropology in the early 20th century. He was born in Cromarty and began his career in Glasgow. Between 1903 and 1910 he owned and edited The North Star in Dingwall, and then moved to the People’s Journal in Dundee. From […]
Alfred John Church (1829-1912) was an English classical scholar. He was born in London and was educated at King’s College London, and Lincoln College, Oxford, he took holy orders and was an assistant-master at Merchant Taylors’ School for many years. From 1880 until 1888 he was professor of Latin at University College, London. While at […]
Mary Mackay (1855-1924) was a British novelist. She began her career as a musician, adopting the name Marie Corelli for her billing. She gave up music, turning to writing instead and in 1886 published her first novel, A Romance of Two Worlds. In her time, she was the most widely read author of fiction but […]
Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) was an American author, actor, and independent filmmaker best known as the creator, along with illustrator W. W. Denslow, of one of the most popular books ever written in American children’s literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), better known today as simply The Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen sequels, […]
Louis Marie-Anne Couperus (1863-1923) was a Dutch novelist and poet of the late 19th and early 20th century. He is usually considered one of the foremost figures in Dutch literature. He came to fame with the publication of his first novel Eline Vere (1888), a naturalist work influenced by French novelists like Emile Zola and […]
THE origin of the following legend is itself somewhat of a legend. The author of this little story, or, as it may more correctly be termed, this sweet poem, was a young maiden. You will easily discover this, for, in truth, so simple and natural a tale could only have emanated from the fresh and […]
When the Little Boy first went to the Old Tobacco Shop, he stood a long while before going in, to look at the wooden figure which stood beside the door. His father was sitting at home in his carpet-slippers, waiting for tobacco for his pipe, but when the Little Boy saw the wooden figure he […]
Louis Holberg/Ludvig Holberg, Baron of Holberg (1684-1754) was a writer, essayist, philosopher, historian and playwright. He was influenced by Humanism, the Enlightenment and the Baroque. Holberg is considered the founder of modern Danish and Norwegian literature, and is best known for the comedies he wrote 1722-23 for the theatre in Lille Gronnegade in Copenhagen. His […]
William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction and science fiction. Early in his writing career he dedicated effort to poetry, although few of his poems were published during his lifetime. He also […]
Frederic William Moorman (1872-1919) was a professor of English at Leeds University in England. He compiled several books of traditional Yorkshire stories and poems, some in the Yorkshire dialect. His works include: William Browne (1897), Robert Herrick: A Biographical and Critical Study (1910), The Place Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire (1910), Cavalier Lyrists […]
Jean Ingelow (1820-1897) was an English poet and novelist. As a girl she contributed verses and tales to magazines under the pseudonym of Orris, but her first (anonymous) volume, A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings, did not appear until her thirtieth year. She followed this book of verse in 1851 with a story, Allerton […]
King Arthur is a legendary British leader who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against the Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur’s story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historians. The legendary Arthur […]
Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860) war ein deutscher Dichter und Revolutionär. Ab 1791 studierte er zunächst an der Universität Greifswald und später in Jena, neben evangelischer Theologie, Geschichte, Erd- und Völkerkunde auch Sprachen und Naturwissenschaften. Er erhielt, nach einem Aufenthalt (1803-1804) in Schweden, 1806 eine außerordentliche Professur an der philosophischen Fakultät in Greifswald. Durch seine Schrift […]
Denis Diderot (1713-1784), ne a Langres, est un ecrivain, philosophe et encyclopediste francais. Diderot fut un des grands animateurs intellectuels du XVIIIe siecle par sa curiosite, sa vaste culture, sa connaissance des langues, son esprit critique et sa force de travail. L’annee 1743 marque egalement le debut de la carriere litteraire de Diderot, par le […]