Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England

Paradise Lost and Regained
by John Milton

Contained in this volume are two great works by the English Poet John Milton, "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained". Milton's "Paradise Lost" is considered to be one of the most classic epic poems ever written. It is a retelling of the biblical story of the Genesis of man, of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and of how Eve when tempted by Satan disobeyed God and ate from the tree of knowledge. Written in 1667, "Paradise Lost" is a poetic and intriguing interpretation of ancient biblical legend. Following the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in Milton's "Paradise Lost", Milton turns his attention to the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by Satan in "Paradise Regained". In this work, a sequel to "Paradise Lost", Satan tests Jesus in a similar way to Eve in the Garden of Eden. However, Jesus is not seduced by the promises of Satan and passes his test. "Paradise Regained" is a poetic and intriguing tale that follows along in the spirit of Milton's masterpiece "Paradise Lost".

Youll find you simply can not put it down could not put it down. It is great to read and learn alot about the period in history and the life of Rousseau himself, but that isnt the magic of the book. It is Rousseau himself who seems to come alive through the pages.

The tortured honesty on every page which excites and shocks you, keeps you up late every night until you are finished. There are times you simply have to put the book down, catch your breath a little, and think, Oh My! I cant believe it!

After, you will realize you have finished one of the best reading experiences of your life. It ranks right up there with The Red and The Black, Les Mis, Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina. This book will live through the ages.

Rousseau, like Voltaire and Diderot, his contemporaries, could look upon his fellow man and himself with both a frown and a smile. He claims at the outset of the work that he is going to show you himself as he honestly is, warts and all. Dont believe him! But dont turn your back on him either, or dismiss him as a liar! You would be denying yourself the company of one of the most charming alluring reconteurs in all of literature, should you do so.

Monsieur Rousseau absolutely loves talking about himself. That sounds like a recipe for boredom, I know. But the trouble is, hes got such a fascinating subject. He knew everyone who was anyone in the 18th century. The women, in particular, were the actual movers and shakers of fin de siecle France. They were figures who presided over literary salons when there actually were literary salons. Madame de Stael is only one matron who looms large in the account. France was basically ruled by powerful and cunning women in that era. Rousseau was there, mentally recording every intimate bon mot and detail.

Then there is his infectious, expansive nature to win you over! Try as you might, self centered as the man is, you cant help liking the guy! He is the ultimate Romantic, in the best sense of the word. He believes in his soul that mankind is noble, that we were put here on earth to enact a divine plan for the benefit of all. That the French Revolution would show a different, Hobbesian side to his theory doesnt really diminish his optimistic, humanistic influence on the Romantic movement and ultimately 19th century literature, in general. Hes one of those seminal figures without whom Goethe, the Romantic poets, Blake, Emerson, Whitman, etc. wouldnt have been possible.

The Brothers Karamazov By Fyodor Dostoyevsky - With Summary and Audio Book Link

FEATURES:
    
     •     Title contains Summary

     •     Audio Book Link at the end of the book.

     •     Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Biography

     •     Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Top Quotes

     •     Easy to navigated Active Table of Contents

     •     High formatting quality and standards, manually crafted by professionals

The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880. Dostoyevsky intended it to be the first part in an epic story titled The Life of a Great Sinner, but he died less than four months after its publication.

The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia. Dostoyevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which is also the main setting of the novel. Since its publication, it has been acclaimed all over the world by intellectuals as diverse as Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Cormac McCarthy and Kurt Vonnegut as one of the supreme achievements in literature.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly written in verse although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
After a long list of works written earlier in his career, including Troilus and Criseyde, House of Fame, and Parliament of Fowls, the Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of its characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection resembles The Decameron, which Chaucer may have read during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372.
It is sometimes argued that the greatest contribution that this work made to English literature was in popularizing the literary use of the vernacular, English, rather than French or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language for centuries before Chaucer's life, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, William Langland, and the Pearl Poet—also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was responsible for starting a trend rather than simply being part of it. Also, while Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems (the Book of the Duchess is believed to have been written for John of Gaunt on the occasion of his wife's death in 1368), the intended audience of The Canterbury Tales is more difficult to determine. Chaucer was a courtier, leading some to believe that he was mainly a court poet who wrote exclusively for nobility.

The question of whether The Canterbury Tales is finished has not yet been answered. There are 83 known manuscripts of the work from the late medieval and early Renaissance period, more than any other vernacular literary text with the exception of The Prick of Conscience. This is taken as evidence of the tales' popularity during the century after Chaucer's death. Fifty-five of these manuscripts are thought to have been complete at one time, while 28 are so fragmentary that it is difficult to ascertain whether they were copied individually or as part of a set. The Tales vary in both minor and major ways from manuscript to manuscript; many of the minor variations are due to copyists' errors, while others suggest that Chaucer added to and revised his work as it was being copied and (possibly) distributed.
Even the earliest surviving manuscripts are not Chaucer's originals, the oldest being MS Peniarth 392 D (called "Hengwrt"), compiled by a scribe shortly after Chaucer's death. The most beautiful of the manuscripts of the tales is the Ellesmere Manuscript, and many editors have followed the order of the Ellesmere over the centuries, even down to the present day. The first version of the Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton's 1478 edition. Since this print edition was created from a now-lost manuscript, it is counted as among the 83 manuscripts.

The Piazza Tales is a collection of short stories by Herman Melville, which he published with Dix & Edwards in 1856 in the United States. A British edition followed shortly afterward. Except for the title story, "The Piazza," all of the stories had appeared in Putnam's Monthly over the years before. It was the only such collection published during Melville's lifetime.[1] Originally, Melville had intended to entitle the volume Benito Cereno and Other Sketches,but it was The Encantadas, his sketches of the Galápagos Islands, that garnered the most attention from critics. Even though The Piazza Tales received largely favorable reviews, it did not sell well enough to get Melville out of his financial straits.

The only new piece (that is, the only one not previously published in a periodical) is the opening sketch, which took Hawthorne nearly a year to write; it is a leisurely tour of the old Manse, his newly acquired historical estate in Concord and Emersons childhood home. Interesting mostly from a biographical perspective, the essay tries hard--but largely fails--to share with the reader Hawthornes enthusiasm for his new home. The rest of the volume, fortunately, is filled with grand, eerie, humorous, and memorable allegories. Every reader and critic has his or her own favorites, but a few stand out for their uniqueness.

A Select Party recounts a dinner hosted by a Man of Fancy in one of his castles in the air; the guests are such improbable personages as an incorruptible Patriot; a Scholar without pedantry; a Priest without world ambition, and a Beautiful Woman without pride or coquetry. The thoughts and desires of the partygoers are as ethereal as the clouds they inhabit. In a similar vein, The Intelligence Office is a comic pre-Kafkaesque allegory of a parade of customers who seek the whereabouts (and the worth) of their long-lost desires; only a man seeking Truth unveils the Intelligencer as merely delusive, a bureaucrat who makes wishes come true by simply acknowledging, not fulfilling, them. The Celestial Rail-road, the full implications of which I appreciated only after a second reading, is a retelling of Pilgrims Progress, in which devilishly clever entrepreneurs have repackaged Christians journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and to the Celestial City as a Disneyland-style theme park and tourist attraction.

Some of the stories can be read as prototypes in the genres of horror and science fiction. In the futuristic Earths Holocaust, a great bonfire is lit to consume every human and divine appendage of our mortal state: medicine, liquor, literature, weapons, money, art, jewelry, scriptures--so that there is far less both of good and evil. The Artist of the Beautiful pits Owen, a watchmaker who struggles to create a true-to-life mechanical butterfly, against a powerful village blacksmith; both contenders vie for the attentions of a beautiful woman in a classic struggle of intelligence and beauty versus technology and brute strength.

Two of Hawthornes most well-known tales--The Birth-mark and Rappaccinis Daughter--are unsettling in their macabre Poe-like finales. Both feature scientists whose quest for what can be discovered override moral considerations of whether something should be done: the alchemist in the first story concocts a method to remove a birthmark from his wifes cheek; the second tale pits two rivals who conduct their academic warfare with potions and antidotes, using ones daughter and the others apprentice as unwitting intermediaries. Their similar endings, while predictable, are disturbingly bleak visions of modernity.

Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition.

This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside:

London, Printed for John Wright, and are to be sold at his shop without Newgate, at the signe of the Bible, 1616, 4to.

...Sirrah, wilt thou be my man, and wait on me, and I will

... For I tell thee I am damnd and now in hell.

... I was born in hell; and look to it, for some of you shall be my

Herbert George Wells, better known as H. G. Wells, was an English
writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine,
The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau.
He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and produced
works in many different genres, including contemporary novels,
history, and social commentary. He was also an outspoken socialist. His
later works become increasingly political and didactic, and only his early
science fiction novels are widely read today. Wells, along with Hugo
Gernsback and Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as "The Father of
Science Fiction".