Nicholas Nickleby; or, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is a novel by Charles Dickens. Originally published as aserial from 1838 to 1839, it was Dickens' third novel. The novel centres on the life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a young man who must support his mother and sister after his father dies. Nicholas Nickleby's father dies unexpectedly after losing all of his money in...

Two collections of rarely published early sketches by Dickens, one about Young Gentleman (including items like The Bashful Young Gentleman, The Military Young Gentleman and The Theatrical Young Gentleman) and one about (mostly) young couples (including items like The Young Couple, The Loving Couple and The Old Couple). The sketches are short with occasional illustrations and combine humor,...

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America in the era now referred to as the Gilded Age. Although not one of Twain's best-known works, it has appeared in more than one hundred editions since its original publication. Twain and Warner originally had planned to issue the novel with...

Mother Goose in Prose is a collection of twenty-two children's stories based on Mother Goose nursery rhymes. It was the first children's book written by L. Frank Baum, and the first book illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. It was originally published in 1897 by Way and Williams of Chicago, and re-released by the George M. Hill Company in 1901. The book opens with an introduction by Baum that traces...

No Thoroughfare is a stage play and novel by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, both released in December 1867. In 1867 Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins collaborated to produce a stage play titled No Thoroughfare: A Drama: In Five Acts. This was the last stage production to be associated with Dickens, who died in June 1870. The play opened at the Adelphi Theatre on 26 December 1867. The novel...

WITH The Sea Fairies, my book for 1911, I ventured into a new field of fairy literature and to my delight the book was received with much approval by my former readers, many of whom have written me that they like Trot "almost as well as Dorothy." As Dorothy was an old, old friend and Trot a new one, I think this is very high praise for Cap'n Bill's little companion. Cap'n Bill is also a new...

I send this little book out into the world, first, to aid those who, having decided to adopt a bloodless diet, are still asking how they can be nourished without flesh; second, in the hope of gaining something further to protect “the speechless ones” who, having come down through the centuries under “the dominion of man,” have in their eyes the mute, appealing look of the...

The composer whom we call WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART was called Wolferl when he was a little boy. He had a sister, MARIA ANNA, who was called NANNERL. Nannerl was five years older than her brother. She had lessons from her father on a kind of piano called a harpsichord.

Northanger Abbey /ˈnɔrθˌæŋɡər/ was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan (as it was first called) was written circa 1798-99. It was revised by Austen for the press in 1803, and sold in the same year for £10...

The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906) is a collection of thirty comic short stories by the iconic American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The stories contained span the course of his career, from Advice to Young Girls in 1865 to the titular tale in 1904. Although Twain had ample time to refine his short stories between their original publication date and this collection, there is little...

A mysterious benefactor turns out to be the last person anyone could have expected.

Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall edition of “Christmas Stories” by David Price

The simple truth, and everybody knows it really, is that collars squeak for some people and not for others. A squeaky collar round the neck of a man is a comment, not upon the collar, but upon the man. That man is unlucky. Things are against him. Nature may have done all for him that she could, have given him a handsome outside and a noble inside, but the world of inanimate objects is against...

Maurice Traherne is wrongly accused of fraud and gambling and must play a careful hand if he is to win his love, Octavia, from the grasp of other, less honorable men and retain the trust of those who had faith in him. Traherne is temporarily crippled saving the life of his well-born friend, Jaspar. Thus, Jaspar is assured of inheriting his father's estate, but it is expected that Traherne will...

Mrs Lirriper is an involving story of people thrown together by chance, that moves from the squalors of Victorian London to the sunnier climes of southern France. Recently widowed, Mrs. Lirriper devotes her energies to attending to the needs of her assorted lodgers; but when a newborn child is abandoned to her care, her responsibilities grow to new levels. She enlists longtime lodger, the Major,...

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devonin England's West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural...

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain about Joan of Arc. It was Twain's last completed novel. The novel is presented as a translation (by "Jean Francois Alden") of memoirs by Louis de Conte. The novel describes itself as Freely Translated out of the Ancient French into Modern English from the Original Unpublished Manuscript in the...

The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit; The clock hath struck twelve upon the bell; My mistress made it one upon my cheek- She is so hot, because the meat is cold; Methinks your man, like mine, should be your clock, And strike you home without a messenger. My charge was but to fetch you from the mart Home to your house, the Phœnix, sir, to dinner- My mistress and her sister wait for...

Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902. The title refers to prostitution. The story centres on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren and her daughter, Vivie. Mrs. Warren, a former prostitute and current brothel owner, is described as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman." Vivie, an...

The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain published in 1869 which humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City (formerlyUSS Quaker City) through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers in 1867. It was the best-selling of Twain's works during his...