Word to the Wise – förlag

John Galsworthy first published in 1897 with a collection of short stories entitled “The Four Winds”. For the next 7 years he published these and all works under his pen name John Sinjohn. It was only upon the death of his father and the publication of “The Island Pharisees” in 1904 that he published as John Galsworthy. His first play was The Silver Box, an immediate success when it debuted in 1906 and was followed by “The Man of Property" later that same year and was the first in the Forsyte trilogy. Whilst today he is far more well know as a Nobel Prize winning novelist then he was considered a playwright dealing with social issues and the class system. We publish here ‘Villa Rubein’ a great example of both his shorter story writing and his demonstration of how the class system worked at the time. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1929, after earlier turning down a knighthood, and awarded the Nobel Prize in 1932 though he was too ill to attend. John Galsworthy died from a brain tumour at his London home, Grove Lodge, Hampstead on January 31st 1933. In accordance with his will he was cremated at Woking with his ashes then being scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane.

Born in 1797, Mary Shelley’s mother died when she was only 11 days old. Mary was then raised by her Father, who remarried when she was four, and thereafter the young Mary had a liberal but informal upbringing. At 17 she began the relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley which was the bedrock of her life; although society viewed the unmarrieds somewhat differently. It was in this relationship that she nurtured and edited Shelley’s verse and wrote, at 21, her signature work "Frankenstein” for which she is so well known. Her husband drowned when she was 25 which added further to the earlier loss of 3 of her 4 children. Beset with such great tragedy her life remained to be fulfilled but, at only 53, a brain tumour was to take her own life. However she left behind a wonderful collection of works of which Lodore is a rich and textured part.

Marie-Henri Beyle was born on January 23rd 1783 in Grenoble, Isere. He is known to us all by his pen name; Stendahl. He spent much of his childhood in an unhappy state, mourning his beloved mother who died when he was 7 and disliking his unimaginative father. His early career was in the military and theatrical worlds of the First French Empire. He was an auditor with the Conseil d''État and took part in the French administration and the Napoleonic wars in Italy. He also travelled extensively in Germany and was part of Napoleon''s army in the 1812 invasion of Russia. After the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau, he left for Italy and settled in Milan. He adored Italy and was to spend much of his career there, serving as French consul at Trieste and Civitavecchia. Stendhal was a dandy and wit about town in Paris, and an inveterate womaniser, obsessed with his sexual conquests. His genuine empathy towards women is evident in his books. One of his early works is On Love, a rational analysis of romantic passion that was based on his unrequited love for Mathilde, Countess Dembowska, whom he met while living at Milan. This fusion and tension between, clear-headed analysis and romantic feeling is typical of Stendhal''s great novels. Indeed Stendahl was a forerunner of the Romantic Realist movement. Stendhal suffered miserable physical disabilities in his final years though he continued to produce much of his most famous work. To treat his syphilis he was taking iodide of potassium and quicksilver. A treatment whose side effects were measurably worse than the effects of the syphilis itself. Stendhal died on 23 March 1842, a few hours after collapsing with a seizure on the streets of Paris. He is interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre.

Oscar Fingal O''Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin Ireland. The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Dublin, then at Oxford. With his education complete Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles. With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day. His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with Salome in 1891. His society comedies produced enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London. Whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years'' hard labour. It was to break him. On release he left for France, There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’. Here we publish his moving but factual account and plea of life in prison.

Samuel Butler was born on 4th December 1835 at the village rectory in Langar, Nottinghamshire.

His relationship with his parents, especially his father, was largely antagonistic. His education began at home and included frequent beatings, as was all too common at the time.

Under his parents'' influence, he was set to follow his father into the priesthood. He was schooled at Shrewsbury and then St John''s College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first in Classics in 1858.

After Cambridge he went to live in a low-income parish in London 1858–59 as preparation for his ordination into the Anglican clergy; there he discovered that baptism made no apparent difference to the morals and behaviour of his new peers. He began to question his faith. Correspondence with his father about the issue failed to set his mind at peace, inciting instead his father''s wrath.

As a result, the young Butler emigrated in September 1859 to New Zealand. He was determined to change his life.

He wrote of his arrival and life as a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station in ‘A First Year in Canterbury Settlement’ (1863). After a few years he sold his farm and made a handsome profit. But the chief achievement of these years were the drafts and source material for much of his masterpiece ‘Erewhon’.

Butler returned to England in 1864, settling in rooms in Clifford''s Inn, near Fleet Street, where he would live for the rest of his life.

In 1872, he published his Utopian novel ‘Erewhon’ which made him a well-known figure.

He wrote a number of other books, including a moderately successful sequel, ‘Erewhon Revisited’ before his masterpiece and semi-autobiographical novel ‘The Way of All Flesh’ appeared after his death. Butler thought its tone of satirical attack on Victorian morality too contentious to publish during his life time and thereby shied away from further potential problems.

Samuel Butler died aged 66 on 18th June 1902 at a nursing home in St John''s Wood Road, London. He was cremated at Woking Crematorium, and accounts say his ashes were either dispersed or buried in an unmarked grave.

Thomas Hardy (2nd June 1840 – 11th January 1928), celebrated poet and writer, was born in a modest thatched cottage near Dorchester in the West country, to a builder father. His mother came from a line of intelligent, lively and ambitious women so ensured her son had the best formal education available for their modest means although this ended when he was 16. He became a draughtsman specialising in the building of churches was able to give it up to be a full time writer and poet with the publication of Far From the Madding Crown which became a bestseller and like much of his work was serialised. His writing reflects his passionate beliefs for social reform and exposes the hypocrisy of the rules of the Victorian age which constrained many freedoms with convention and restricted the transcending of class boundaries. His novels are almost entirely set in rural Wessex which although fictional is clearly rooted in the SW counties of England where he was born and lived most of his life. Hardy’s writing caused controversy in his lifetime but despite this he was highly praised and showered with honorary doctorates from many universities, a knighthood, which he refused and in 1910 the prestigious Order of the Merit. Return of the Native opens with an evocative description of the bleak brooding Egdon Heath which is not only the setting for the book but also anticipates the dark tone of the novel. The native in the title is Clym Yeobright who is returning to the place where he grew up to settle and be a positive part of the community which was missing from his life in Paris. He falls in love with the tempestuous Eustacia Vye who dreams of passionate love and is dazzled by the idea of a life in Paris which would liberate her from the stifling claustrophobia she feels in Egdon. Marriage accentuates her restlessness and resolve to escape causing frustration, disappointment, betrayal and tragedy. Hardy provides a poetic compassion for both characters and creates powerful scenes heightening the dramatic tension and making this a special read.

“In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by the long, hot summer and the long, hot work it had brought with it, ran away from their employer.” Thus starts The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1857) written in collaboration between the two renowned Victorian novelists Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Before the book took the form of a novella, it was serialized in Dickens’s periodical Household Words. It tells the story of two idle young men who are actually nothing but caricatures of the two authors themselves. They both go on a trip to Cumberland in North West England and start speaking about their adventures there. While the fictional Thomas Idle stands for Collins, Francis Goodchild stands for Dickens. For Francis, idleness is to spend one’s time without doing anything of significant importance while Thomas decides, after a number of misadventures, that activity is the root of all evil and that the only way to remain safe is to do absolutely nothing. Generally, the book is the authors’ very enjoyable satire of themselves and of each other although it also includes some reflections on social issues such as poverty and class differences.

The great author of Vanity Fair and The Luck Of Barry Lyndon was born in India in 1811. At age 5 his father died and his mother sent him back to England. His education was of the best but he himself seemed unable to apply his talents to a rigorous work ethic. However, once he harnessed his talents the works flowed in novels, articles, short stories, sketches and lectures. Sadly, his personal life was rather more difficult. After a few years of marriage his wife began to suffer from depression and over the years became detached from reality. Thackeray himself suffered from ill health later in his life and the one pursuit that kept him moving forward was that of writing. In his life time, he was placed second only to Dickens. High praise indeed.

First serialized and then published as a book in 1860, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White represents a seminal classic of English fiction. It is classified by some critics among mystery novels and by some others as a Gothic novel. The narrative’s structure is epistolary. It tells the story of a poor young art teacher named Walter Hartright who happens to see a strange apparition one evening as he is strolling through the streets of London. It is the unearthly figure of a woman dressed all in white and who seems to suffer from mental troubles. Later in the novel, while teaching at Limmeridge House, Walter discovers that his most beloved student named Laura has a striking resemblance to the mad woman that he has encountered. Despite the mutual love between the teacher and his student, the latter has to marry a noble man named Sir Percival Glyde to satisfy her father’s wishes. The readers then learn that the woman in white is Laura’s half sister who was confined to a mental asylum and who eventually dies of a heart condition. Glyde does not really like Laura and wishes to steal her money. He conspires to send her to the mental asylum to replace her identical sister. Helped by her other sister Marian, Laura manages to flee the asylum and finally marry Walter after the accidental death of her wicked husband.

Kim (1901) is a novel by Rudyard Kipling, a Nobel-Prize winning English writer who was born in India and whose novels often deal with Indian themes. The eponymous protagonist in Kim is the impecunious orphan of an Irish soldier who finds himself in the streets of the Indian city of Lahore in the late nineteenth century after having lost both parents. Kim gradually becomes completely integrated in the Indian society with the only obstacle being his physical conspicuousness. His life of vagrancy pushes him to master Indian customs and Indian specificities more than the natives themselves. He lives mainly on begging money at times and doing petty jobs at other times. Later, Kim meets a Lama, or a Tibetan religious leader, and becomes his follower and disciple. He goes with the Lama for adventurous trips until one day a Christian chaplain recognizes him as British, separates him from the Lama and sends him to school. After graduation from school, Kim is expected to join the British government in its war against Russians. He also meets the Lama again and a sort of juxtaposition is set between the project of the war known as the Great Game and the Buddhist spiritual quest. Kim has to choose between the two opposing paths.

Wherein is Recorded the Perilous Quest of Prince Inga of Pingaree and King Rinkitink in the Magical Isles that Lie Beyond the Borderland of Oz. Baum was always one for a long sub-tile! This is the tenth book in the series and was published on June 20th, 1916. Most of the novel had been written by Baum over ten years before as a fantasy novel so almost until the end no-one from Oz appears. Most of the action takes place on three islands; Pingaree, Regos, and Coregos and within the Nome King''s caverns.

The Emerald City of Oz was originally published on July 20th, 1910 and is the sixth book in the Oz series written by L Frank Baum. It is the story of Dorothy Gale and her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em taking a tour of the Land Of Oz as they come to live in Oz permanently. Whilst they are touring the Quadling Country, the Nome King is assembling allies for an invasion of Oz. As he now has banished both his General and his Colonel he has to rely on advice from the old soldier Guph who is on the search for further recruits to take on the magicians of Oz.

The Enchanted Isle Of Yew is one of the many Non-Land Of Oz books written by L Frank Baum. This was first published in 1903. Sesely, daughter of Baron Merd of Heg, and two friends are enjoying a picnic in the Forest of Lurla when they meet a fairy. The fairy, bored with centuries of innocent fairy life, amazes the girls by pleading to be changed into a mortal. Though the girls are surprised, the fairy explains how it can be done. The girls agree to transform the fairy into a human boy for one year. He is now Prince Marvel! Since Yew is so dominated by robbers and rogues, Prince Marvel doesn''t have to travel far to find said adventures.

This is the eleventh book in the series and was published on June 5h, 1917. The introduction to the book says that its inspiration was a letter a little girl had written to Baum: "I suppose if Ozma ever got hurt or losted, everybody would be sorry." Dorothy is in the Emerald City looking for Ozma who is missing. But that’s not all that is missing. Glinda awakens in her palace in the Quadling Country and finds her Great Book of Records is missing. She goes to prepare a magic spell to find it- only to see her magic tools are gone as well. She dispatches a messenger to the Emerald City to relay news of the theft. The Wizard offers his magic tools to assist Glinda, but these are missing as well. Glinda, Dorothy, and the Wizard organize search parties to find Ozma and the missing magic.

The Marvelous Land of Oz: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, has frequently been shortened to The Land of Oz and was published in July 1904. The second book in the series it and the story centers on a young boy named Tip who with Jack Pumpkinhead who has been brought to life with the magic ‘Powder of Life’ and the Sawhorse help The Scarecrow after he flees the Emerald City.

The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the Detective stories of Charles Dickens. Dickens is a name that dominates the landscape of English novelists. His works are masterpieces and he is held everywhere in the highest regard. In his fairly short life of 58 years he accomplished an extraordinary number of classic novels, especially in light of his humble and poor beginnings. Here in this collection of Detective stories his hand and mind are everywhere within their short length proving once again that Dickens could master almost any form of writing.

Anthony Trollope was born in London on 24th April 1815. He is considered a giant of English literature and perhaps his crowning achievement is the series of books known as The Barchester Chronicles. We continue that series with book 4 ''Family Parsonage''. Trollope''s early schooling was at Harrow and Sunbury. He was often bullied due to the family’s reduced financial means exacerbated by his bad tempered father who seemed to be full of energy but lacking in any follow through to turn it into a regular income. His mother, Frances, moved with three of his younger siblings to the United States in 1827 returning only in 1831 as a successful writer. His father who had travelled with them for only a short time continued to fail. In 1834 Anthony Trollope moved with his family to Bruges in Belgium to escape the debt collectors pursuing his father. With the offer of work for the General Post Office he returned to London later that same year. The next 7 years were by his own account unproductive and miserable. However in 1841 a chance to move to Ireland for the GPO availed itself and he took it. His life began to turn around. His salary went further and his work went well and he became a valuable part of its’ work. In 1842 he met and then became engaged to Rose Heseltine and they later married in 1844. The marriage also stimulated his writing ambitions and within a year he had finished his first novel, “The Macdermots of Ballycloran”. During his long travels around Ireland he now began to write extensively often setting himself a schedule about how many words to write in a day. This discipline ensured a prolific and extensive literary catalogue in the decades to follow. In 1851 he was sent to England to organise rural delivery in part of the country. He travelled extensively for two years. In this period he began to nurture the first of the six Barsetshire novels “The Warden’ which was published to encouraging sales in 1855. Two years later, also in the same series, the famed “Barchester Towers” was published. In 1859 he wanted to contribute short stories to the Cornhill magazine, edited by William Makepeace Thackeray. His novel “Framley Parsonage” was initially printed as a serial in the magazine and proved lucrative and reputation building. Wishing to move his writing career forward he knew he should really be established back in England and preferably London. So in 1861 he sought and was appointed as Surveyor to the Eastern District, comprising Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and most of Hertfordshire. That same year he moved to Waltham Cross, about 12 miles from London, where he lived until 1871. In 1868 he resigned from the Post Office in order to run for Parliament (being a public servant he was otherwise ineligible to run) as a Liberal at Beverley in Yorkshire. Unfortunately with vote buying and other corrupt practices prevalent he finished last of 4 candidates despite spending over £400 on the campaign. However it brought new light on to the practice and helped to clean up national politics. Thereafter he focused his attention solely on writing. In 1871 he visited Australia for a year to see his younger son, his ensuing book, though even handed, gave way to resentment on many Australians part which still simmered on a return visit some years later. Shortly before his end he returned again to Ireland to research his last and unfinished novel “The Landleaguers”. In his prolific career he had written 47 novels as well as many short stories and travel books. On December 1882 he died in London and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

The Moonstone (1868) is Wilkie Collins’s second masterpiece, the first being The Woman in White published almost a decade earlier. While both books are often classified as Gothic novels and mystery novels, The Moonstone is also reckoned to be the first detective novel of the English tongue. As long as narration is concerned, Collins makes use of the epistolary style to create even more suspense. The story is about a precious stone brought to Britain by a corrupt English military officer who has served in India. The readers are informed that the stone has a great religious value in India and that some religious zealots are sworn to protect it by all means till the end of days. Before his death, the military veteran ordered the moonstone to be bestowed to his niece Rachel Verinder. The latter organizes a birthday party during which she wears the precious stone not only in front of her English friends and relatives, but also in front of foreign house servants and Indian entertainers. Soon, the stone is reported to be stolen and an investigation starts in search for the thief among the many suspects. After hard efforts made by Rachel’s cousin Franklin Blake and a group of friends to decipher the mystery, the former discovers that the thief is none but himself. Indeed, Blake eventually understands that he has been drugged with opium and has unconsciously stolen the stone. The end of the narrative witnesses the transfer of the moonstone back to its native land.

Percy Bysshe Shelley is more widely known as one of the great Romantic Poets. Yet in his short life he was active politically but also as an essayist where his thoughts and ideas were fresh and innovative. Included in this collection is In Defence Of Poetry which contains the quite wonderful suggestion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world". By the age of 29 he was dead but his quite remarkable body of work lives on.

The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. It is often classified by critics as a “fictional auto-biography” since the story’s protagonist is naturally identified with the author himself. Events in the novel are not as important as the psychological development and maturation that Joyce’s hero Stephen Dedalus goes through from the beginning till the end of the narrative. As an Irish young man, Dedalus wishes to pursue a career of an artist and a writer, yet he is continuously preoccupied with his existential and religious concerns. In fact, he has been raised as a Roman Catholic in a family and a society that often mingle religion with politics and nationalistic sentiments. His concerns are even more intensified when his father goes into serious financial troubles. After a first sexual experience, then a second, Dedalus indulges in a period of debauchery and in all sorts of desires of the flesh. He is soon drowned in feelings of remorse and guilt, however. He turns back to religiosity and decides to lead a life of abstinence and piety, though carrying on with his writing and acting activities. Dedalus’s monologues and contemplations often center on the relationship between religion, sensual desire and the appreciation of beauty. He ultimately determines to escape from all his religious, family and nationalistic chains to lead a life of complete independence and to live only for beauty and art.

Victor Hugo is best known most for his epic novels Les Miserables and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. However in his day he was equally famed for his Poetry of which he wrote many volumes. The masterful Hugo loses none of his insightful scope writing on a smaller scale. When such a great talent decides to write his own life story and he certainly had disasters as well as triumphs you can be assured it will be a work of great and compelling power.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt is another work of fiction by the author of the celebrated masterpiece The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The novella centers around apocalyptic disasters that threaten to end human existence on Earth. Professor Challenger, an English scientist who is interested in preserving nature and human life, anticipates the Earth’s contact with a poison belt of ether. The dangerous gas is believed to have the power to suffocate all living beings to death. Professor Challenger invites his closest companions, Malone, Roxton and Summerlee, to join him and his wife in his house. They are asked to bring oxygen tanks with them to find that Challenger has prepared a sealed room to protect their lives. Later, from their little shelter, Challenger’s team watch the destruction of the outside world and the dying of almost everything. When they finally run out of oxygen, they are pushed to get out of the sealed room. Yet, to their surprise, they do not die. The Earth has passed through the poison belt and humanity has survived.

Hard Times is Charles Dickens’s tenth novel that has been considered most seriously by literary critics and historians. It concentrates on the portrayal of the English society of the nineteenth century as well as on its different cultural and economic aspects. The story, which is set in a fictional Victorian town, is divided into three parts which are respectively entitled “Sowing,” “Reaping,” and “Garnering.” The central character of the first part is Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy man, a school headmaster and a father to 5 children. Generally, Mr. Gradgrind is a man of reason and thought, but also of strict rules and codes of behavior. The narrative gives minute details of his daily activities and habits as well as of the way he brings up his children, teaching them principles of rationalism and self-interest. The story then follows the existence of his children and family in the remaining parts of the novel. Dickens mainly deals with the much-debated social issues of the time such as the importance of professional careers, love and marriage. By the end of the narrative, Mr. Gradgrind eventually seems to become less categorical as to his strict principles of rationalism and utilitarianism.

Charles Dickens’s Pictures from Italy can be considered as a guide for nineteenth-century travelers of Italy, or travelogue, as it provides narrative pictures of the different corners and aspects of the country. It was in 1844 that the Victorian novelist visited the most picturesque of Italian cities and towns such as Rome, Naples, Florence, Genoa and Venice. In the narrative, he is doubly amazed at the sites themselves as well as at the impression that they have left on his spirit. Dickens’s Italy is a beautiful assortment of contrasts, both visual and cultural. The colorful pictures display Mediterranean lifestyle, temperament and habits. Although Dickens pays much attention to street life, costumes and Italian cuisine, his accounts differ greatly from tradition travel literature. Indeed, Pictures from Italy often bears a critical aspect pertaining to the prevailing poverty as well as to the corruption of the political class. The squalor of certain city slums and the cruelty of certain state practices are juxtaposed with the luxurious buildings and the grandeur of the great monuments of the ancient Roman Empire. In a word, Dickens’s travelogue is not merely an exploration of unknown parts of Europe, but also a serious journalistic and critical work.

The story of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novella The Moorland Cottage takes place in a modest cottage near the town of Combehurst where Mrs. Browne lives with her two children, Edward and Maggie, along with their servant, Nancy. In her description of their daily life, Gaskell mainly insists on showing how the mother unfairly favors the boy over the girl. While she overtly spoils Edward, she keeps on treating Maggie in a very harsh way, never showing her any motherly love or tenderness. Gaskell also shows how Maggie is pushed to accept this inequality in the family and how she even starts to justify it and explain it. Near the Brownes’ cottage lives the Bruxton family in a big and luxurious house. Mr. Bruxton and his good-hearted wife behave in a very humane way with their neighbors. They equally have a son and a niece, Frank and Erminia, who attempt to befriend Edward and Maggie. Yet, the Bruxtons soon discover the huge difference in character and behavior between the brother and the sister. While falling in love with Maggie’s goodness and light personality, they are struck by Edward’s rudeness and selfishness. Nonetheless, with time, the two families get closer and their life and future become connected. As the two families’ children grow older, the readers see the impact of their childhood education on their adult personality. Maggie’s interaction with the Bruxtons makes her look at things in a different way and see the faults in her brother’s and mother’s characters.

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy is a children’s classic novel that demonstrates how little children can affect the behavior of the adults surrounding them. The events revolve around the character of a young American named Cedric. His English father married his American mother in spite of his aristocratic family’s disapproval of such a relation. Cedric’s family lived in poverty in one of New York’s popular neighborhoods and after the death of his father they received news from England informing them that Cedric is now heir to his grandfather’s Earldom and wealth. The grandfather wants Cedric to move to England and to learn to be a nobleman. Yet, unexpectedly, when Cedric comes to live with him in his estate, the grandfather discovers a young man of incredible gentlemanly manners, modesty and wisdom. The Earl then starts to change his mind about Cedric’s mother and to give up his old prejudices. Cedric indirectly teaches him to become a benefactor and to flood the poor and the needy with aids and gifts. Cedric’s mother is eventually invited to live in the Earl’s castle. The Earl learns that the nobility that he has always believed in and venerated actually lies in actions.

Jane Austen’s Lady Susan (1871) is an epistolary novella centering around the character of an attractive and flirtatious widow who is after a second marriage. Lady Susan Vernon is basically portrayed as a selfish villain and a conniving sociopath who engages in different schemes to realize her vicious ends. Her social life is marked by hypocrisy, manipulation and opportunism. She secretly despises all her liaisons. The reader gradually learns that she even looks down on her own daughter Frederica and considers her to be a sort of impediment for her. Throughout the narrative, Lady Susan does her utmost to get rid of her sixteen-year-old daughter by trying to find a wealthy husband for her. Moreover, she makes use of her seductive strategies to lure noble men who are often younger than her. Single men as well as married ones get entangled in her nets as the plot proceeds to its end. Although the resolution of the story is far from being disastrous for the unscrupulous Lady Susan, it still takes the form of moral rectification when Frederica develops an honest, romantic relationship with the warm gentleman Reginald de Courcy while her mother eventually marries after many a flirtatious adventure. We’ve also included a concise and informative biography of Jane’s works and life at the end of the book. We hope it helps to give a little context and colour about how her life interacted with her art.

The protagonist in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is Fanny Price, a young girl who is raised in the house of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas. She ultimately falls in love with her cousin Edmund, the only one in the household who does not look down on her for her inferior social class. When Edmund starts to develop a relationship with his other cousin Mary who is already engaged, Fanny is seriously worried. However, her worries soon vanish when she realizes Mary’s relationship with other men. In the absence of Sir Thomas, who has gone to visit his plantations in Antigua, the group of young cousins decide to perform a romantic play which enables Henry, Mary’s brother, to flirt with Maria, one of Sir Thomas’s daughters. Henry later tries to seduce Fanny in a playful way, yet he soon falls in love with her. When he proposes to her she rejects him for the multiple affairs that he often engages in. This disappoints Sir Thomas who thinks that Fanny should not miss the opportunity of such an advantageous match from a superior social class. Edmund eventually realizes Fanny’s unique kindness and decides to marry her. By and large, Mansfield Park  is an investigation of moral and social conventions of early nineteenth-century Britain. We’ve also included a concise and informative biography of Jane’s works and life at the end of the book. We hope it helps to give a little context and colour about how her life interacted with her art.

Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen’s earliest novels which is believed to be influenced by the Gothic works of Ann Radcliffe. The story centers around Catherine Morland, a country churchman’s daughter who is fond of Gothic fiction. The story starts when Catherine is invited by her wealthy family friends to visit the famous town of Bath. She soon falls in love with the young gentleman Henry Tilney whose erudition and interest in fiction and history simply enchant her. She is later invited to visit Northanger Abbey, Henry’s ancient family estate and expects the Abbey to be similar to the castles she is familiar with in the Gothic novels that she reads. However, she discovers that the building is far from being Gothic save for the mysterious suite of deserted rooms belonging to Henry’s dead mother. Catherine imagines that the rooms hide some secret about the woman’s death, suspecting that Henry’s father may have killed her. When she finally sneaks into the rooms, she finds absolutely nothing that confirms her Gothic visions. Furthermore, she is caught by Henry who, after hearing about her motivations, informs her that his parents really loved each other. Catherine is finally convinced that despite their entertaining capacity, novels are not necessarily a faithful representation of every-day life. We’ve also included a concise and informative biography of Jane’s works and life at the end of the book. We hope it helps to give a little context and colour about how her life interacted with her art.