Stirring reflections on the human condition from a warrior and emperor provide a fascinating glimpse into the mind and personality of a highly principled Roman of the 2nd century. Recognizing that suffering is at the core of life, he counsels stoic detachment in the face of inevitable pain, loss and death.

First published in 1888, “Looking Backward: 2000-1887” is the highly influential work of utopian science fiction by American journalist Edward Bellamy. In the years following the American Civil War a growth in inequality led to an increase in social and economic turmoil. The rise of ever larger and less competitive firms was causing wages to stagnate and created an appetite amongst the populace for solutions to help mitigate the negative effects of an unrestrained and increasingly plutocratic form of capitalism. This appetite gave rise to a popular ...

“The Aeneid” is considered by some to be one of the most important epic poems of all time. The story is as much one of the great epic hero, Aeneas, as it is of the foundation of the Roman Empire. Aeneas, a Trojan Prince who escapes after the fall of troy, travels to Italy to lay the foundations for what would become the great Roman Empire. Virgil’s “Aeneid” is a story of great adventure, war, love, and of the exploits of an epic hero. In the work Virgil makes his commentary on the state of Rome during the Rule of Augustus. It ...

Widely considered as one of Dickens most superb and complete novels, “Bleak House” contains a more vastly complex and engaging array of characters and sub-plots than any of Dickens’s novels. As is commonplace in his works, Dickens satirically criticizes the social inequities of his time turning his attacks in this instance to the judicial system of 19th century England. At the center of the novel is the story of John Jarndyce who is tied up in a long-running litigation concerning an estate to which his wards Richard Carstone and Ada Clare ...

First published serially between 1859 and 1860, “The Woman in White” is Wilkie Collins’s epistolary novel that tells the tale of Walter Hartright, who encounters a woman all dressed in white on a moonlit road in Hampstead. Hartright helps the woman to find her way back to London. The woman warns him against an unnamed baronet and after they part he discovers that she may have escaped from an insane asylum. Hartright travels to Cumberland where he takes up a position as the art tutor of Laura Fairlie and her devoted half-sister, Marian Halcombe ...

First published in 1871, “Little Men” or “Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys” is considered the second book in the unofficial “Little Women” trilogy by author Louisa May Alcott. “Little Men” follows the adventures of Alcott’s beloved character Jo March and her husband, Professor Fredreich Bhaer, as they run their Plumfield Estate School. As to be expected, Jo and her husband do not run their school along conventional lines and they encourage their students to have pets, gardens, and even weekly pillow ...

“The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies” is the famous and mysterious treatise on fairy folklore, witchcraft, second sight, and ghosts by Gaelic scholar and minister, Robert Kirk. Written before he died in 1692, the work was not published until 1815 after many legends had grown around Kirk’s death, which imagined that he was secreted away by the fairies themselves for revealing their secrets. Most famous during his own lifetime for publishing one of the first translations of the Bible into Gaelic, Kirk spent much of his professional ...

"The Varieties of Religious Experience" is William James's philosophical and psychological examination of the nature of religion in human civilization. Based on James's own Gifford Lectures given at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland between 1901 and 1902, James argues that "Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction ...

"Revelations of Divine Love" is a text of Julian of Norwich's dream visions that she had when she was near death. Then, after being miraculously healed, Julian of Norwich dedicated the rest of her life to writing her series of sixteen visions for all to read and understand. During her life, Norwich had suffered through three different bouts of the Black Death. Julian of Norwich remained optimistic in her faith, though; she denied that the plagues were God's punishment on the wicked. Instead, she believed that God was incapable of punishment. In her eyes, ...

First published as a weekly serial from 1840 to 1841, “The Old Curiosity Shop” by Charles Dickens is a novel that details the life of a beautiful young orphaned girl named Nell Trent. As the story begins, she lives with her loving grandfather in his London curiosity shop, happy, but lonely with only Kit, a kind and honest boy employed in the shop, for a friend. Their fortunes take a turn for the worse when her grandfather loses badly at his secret nighttime gambling activities, something he only did in the hope of affording a better life for ...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," so begins Charles Dickens's famous novel concerning the contentious time leading up to and during the French Revolution. In these first words Dickens exemplifies the dichotomous relationship that existed between the aristocracy and the lower classes of the time and the universal themes that would be depicted throughout the book. "A Tale of Two Cities," is set in London and Paris, the titular two cities, at the end of the 18th century, and principally concerns the lives of Dr. Alexandre Manette, his daughter ...

This comprehensive collection of Twain’s short stories showcases his immense talent, humor, and wit. Considered to be the greatest American humorist of all time, Mark Twain was born in 1835 and was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, where many of his most well-known stories take place. Twain led an adventurous life: working as a type setter for his brother’s newspaper as a young man, then as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi river, followed by a stint as a miner in Nevada and California, and then finally as a journalist and writer, where he found ...

E. W. Bullinger was a 19th century English clergyman, scholar, and prolific author. He is best-known for his detailed six-part work “The Companion Bible”, which was published over many years from 1909 to 1922. That comprehensive guide has assisted countless readers in their goal of better understanding the Bible. In his work “Number in Scripture”, Bullinger examines in impressive detail all of the occurrences of numbers in the Bible and concludes that an examination of these numerical references proves that it was written by God and ...

Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) was a self-designated English novelist. He wrote an astonishing quantity in a great variety of genres while creating a broad range of themes and characters. Winning a literary competition in "Tit-Bits" magazine in 1889 was the kick-off to his literary career. The early novels of Bennett played a significant role in the transition from the Victorian to the modern novel. A contemporary of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Thomas Hardy, he helped to develop the realistic movement in England. In his career, Bennett won only one major ...

Believed to have been written in 1591, William Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is one of the bards first plays, the first installment in a tetralogy of plays which includes “Henry IV, Part I”, “Henry IV, Part II”, and “Henry V”. One of the longest of Shakespeare’s plays and consequently rarely performed unabridged, “Richard III” is the story of the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England. The play begins with Richard, known in the play as Gloucester ...

First published in 1881, “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking: Soups, Pickles, Preserves, etc.” is the informative and practical guide to cooking, canning, and preserving by former slave Abby Fisher. The author was born into slavery in South Carolina in 1831 and moved to San Francisco in 1877, where she achieved fame for her pickle company and award-winning cooking. While Fisher was illiterate, she was full of wisdom and practical experience from decades of cooking and canning and dictated the 160 recipes in this classic cookbook ...

First published in 1864, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” is Jules Verne’s classic tale of adventure, one of the earliest examples of science fiction. When German professor Otto Liedenbrock finds a coded message in an original runic manuscript of Snorri Sturluson’s Icelandic saga, “Heimskringla,” he discovers what he believes to be a secret passage to the center of the Earth. Professor Liedenbrock, who has long hypothesized that there are volcanic tubes which descend deep into the Earth, embarks immediately for Iceland ...

First published in 1834, “A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett” is the autobiography of the famous American folk hero Davy Crockett, often referred to as the “King of the Wild Frontier”. Born in 1786 in Tennessee to an impoverished family who often struggled to make ends meet, Crockett was an adventurous and resourceful boy who was forced at 12 years old to work to support himself. Crockett recounts these early formative years of hardship, as well as his two marriages, famed bear hunts, battles with Indians during his service ...

Set in the fictional industrial town of Milton in the North of England, "North and South" is Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 novel that contrasts the different ways of life in the two respective regions of England. In the North the emerging industrialized society is sharply contrasted with the aging gentry of the agrarian based South. The plot of "North and South" centers around the main character Margaret Hale, the daughter of a non-conformist minister who moves his family to an industrial town in the North after a split from the Church of England. Here the impact ...

First published in 1902, “The Varieties of Religious Experience” is William James’ philosophical and psychological examination of the nature of religion in human civilization. Based on James’s own Gifford Lectures given at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland between 1901 and 1902, James argues that “Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see ‘the liver’ determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist ...