The Dramatic Romances

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is known as one of America's best known and best loved poets of all time. The Complete Poetical Works, covers I believe, everything ever writteb by this exquisite poet.

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A newspaperman follows a beautiful woman on a search for her father to a marvelous hidden island, where the denizens travel through the fourth dimension, employ perpetual motion and do many other wonderful things. You might call it a distaff version of Edgar Rice Burroughs of a lost-world romance.  Two charming love affairs, thrilling perils, pervasive humor, most unusual scenes, a vein of piquant sentiment, a style of grace unmatched, unite to make of "Romance Island" a golden land in fiction.

The Library of Alexandria is an independent small business publishing house. We specialize in bringing back to live rare, historical and ancient books. This includes manuscripts such as: classical fiction, philosophy, science, religion, folklore, mytholog.  (From Amazon). 

"The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) is a novella by Rudyard Kipling. It is about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story was inspired by the exploits of James Brooke, an Englishman who became the first White Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo; and by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan, who was granted the title Prince of Ghor in perpetuity for himself and his descendants. It incorporates a number of other factual elements such as the European-like appearance of many Nuristani people, and an ending modelled on the return of the head of the explorer Adolf Schlagintweit to colonial administrators.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old.

A light Gothic romance that's fast-paced and fun.

Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.- Wikipedia

For the age when healthy romance first begins to be appreciated, there is nothing in English literature more appealing than the fine old story of the Doone robbers, and the little daughter of the outlaws who captured the heart of honest John Ridd.

Richard Doddridge Blackmore (1825-1900), referred to most commonly as R.D. Blackmore, was one of the most famous English novelists of the second half of the nineteenth century.  Blackmore was a pioneering figure in the Romanticism movement and is best known for his novel LORNA DOONE.

Are there three or four pleasing poems and are all the rest put in to fill up the book? Nay, verily! The poems in this collection are those that children love. With the exception of seven, they are short enough for children to commit to memory without wearying themselves or losing interest in the poem. If one boy learns The Overland Mail, or The Recruit, or Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, or The Song in Camp, or Old Ironsides, or I Have a Little Shadow, or The Tournament, or The Duel, nine boys out of ten will be eager to follow him. I know because I have tried it a dozen times. It is often better to divide a long poem among the children, letting each child learn a part. The sustained interest of a long poem is worth while. The Merman, The Battle of Ivry, Horatius at the Bridge, Krinken, The Skeleton in Armour, The Raven and Hervé Riel may all profitably be learned that way. Nevertheless, the child enjoys most the poem that is just long enough, and there is much to be said in favour of the selection that is adapted, in length, to the average mind; for the child hesitates in the presence of quantity rather than in the presence of subtle thought. I make claim for this collection that it is made up of poems that the majority of children will learn of their own free will. There are people who believe that in the matter of learning poetry there is no ought, but this is a false belief. There is a duty, even there; for every American citizen ought to know the great national songs that keep alive the spirit of patriotism. Children should build for their future-and get, while they are children, what only the fresh imagination of the child can assimilate.

They should store up an untold wealth of heroic sentiment; they should acquire the habit of carrying a literary quality in their conversation; they should carry a heart full of the fresh and delightful associations and memories, connected with poetry hours to brighten mature years. They should develop their memories while they have memories to develop.

Will the boy who took every poetry hour for a whole school year to learn Henry of Navarre ever regret it, or will the children who listened to it? No. It was fresh every week and they brought fresh interest in listening. The boy will always love it because he used to love it. There were boys who scrambled for the right to recite The Tournament, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Star-Spangled Banner, and so on. The boy who was first to reach the front had the privilege. The triumph of getting the chance to recite added to the zest of it. Will they ever forget it?