HESPERUS CLASSICS

A classic novella by Henry James.

"When Germain - a shy but handsome widower - is sent by his father-in-law to find himself a wife, he sets out on his journey with a heavy heart. The prospective spouse is said to be rich, with land and a tidy dowry. But Germain fears for the fate of his three angelic children - and for the state of his own bruised heart. Everything changes during his voyage - through a dark wood and around a haunted marsh - when Germain falls passionately in love with an impoverished young shepherdess. Should he follow his heart, and woo the girl he now loves? Or please his family by marrying a rich but disdainful widow?" "A love song to the French countryside - a romance of two simple hearts - The Devil's Pool is above all a paean to an antique language and way of life which, even by 1844, was being eroded by industrialisation and the inexorable expansion of a national identity."--BOOK JACKET.

"Looking for acceptance from his new congregation, the Revd Ernest Lindley cannot long ignore the fact that his parishioners are far from welcoming. Rather than confront such hostility, the Lindleys instead become ever more isolated: he 'pale and miserable and neutral'; she 'bitter and beaten by fear'. And having raised their children to be similarly dispassionate, it surely seems inevitable that their daughters should enter suitable, but loveless, marriages. Whilst Mary becomes the dutiful wife, younger sister Louisa vows to experience love for herself - little knowing that such desires will divide an already broken family." "Elsewhere in the parish, Alfred Durant, recently returned from the navy, struggles to adjust to life in the pits, as well as coping with the imminent death of his beloved mother. His involvement with the Lindley family only serves to bring him further disquiet."--BOOK JACKET.

"The story is usually regarded as an amazing narrative of the experience of dying, a search for the meaning of death. It is all that, and more: it's a great questioning of what is and what ought to be, in a human life."--Nadine Gordimer.

Charlotte Heywood, a young woman from the country, encounters a sophisticated, if cynical, world in the rapidly developing resort town of Sanditon.

From the book:It is a great thing for a lad when he is first turned into the independence of lodgings. I do not think I ever was so satisfied and proud in my life as when, at seventeen, I sate down in a little three-cornered room above a pastry-cook's shop in the county town of Eltham. My father had left me that afternoon, after delivering himself of a few plain precepts, strongly expressed, for my guidance in the new course of life on which I was entering. I was to be a clerk under the engineer who had undertaken to make the little branch line from Eltham to Hornby. My father had got me this situation, which was in a position rather above his own in life; or perhaps I should say, above the station in which he was born and bred; for he was raising himself every year in men's consideration and respect. He was a mechanic by trade, but he had some inventive genius, and a great deal of perseverance, and had devised several valuable improvements in railway machinery. He did not do this for profit, though, as was reasonable, what came in the natural course of things was acceptable; he worked out his ideas, because, as he said, 'until he could put them into shape, they plagued him by night and by day.' But this is enough about my dear father; it is a good thing for a country where there are many like him. He was a sturdy Independent by descent and conviction; and this it was, I believe, which made him place me in the lodgings at the pastry-cook's.

Contains: [Bartleby, the Scrivener]( Benito Cereno

The Eternal Husband (Russian: Вечный муж, Vechny muzh) is a novella by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky that was first published in 1870 in Zarya magazine. The novella's plot revolves around the complicated relationship between Velchaninov and Trusotsky, the husband of his deceased former lover.

"Taking as his setting the glamour and heady sophistication of fin-de-siecle. Parisian salon society, Proust here presents a series of sketches and short stories depicting the lives, love, manners and motivations of a host of characters. Amorous entanglements, idle vanities and feigned morality are all viewed with a characteristically knowing eye. By turns cuttingly satirical and bitterly moving, Proust's portrayals are layered with imagery and feeling, whether they be of the aspiring Bouvard and Pecuchet, the deluded Madame de Breyves, or of Baldassare Silvande saturated with regret, memory and tragic understanding in the face of death."--Jacket.

"London, circa 1880: a lovelorn policeman, a pocket knife, and the unsolved crime of a young husband, murdered on his honeymoon." "Narrated as the deathbed confession of a London policeman, Who Killed Zebedee? exposes the seamier side of Victorian Britain: a realm of cheap hotels, underpaid servants and desperate measures. With a policeman as his narrator, and a female cook as the detective's accomplice, Collins places the world of lower-middle-class England at the centre of his fiction. The accompanying tale, John Jago's Ghost, set in America, portrays with similar empathy the hard-working lives of New England farmers. Both a historic record of life in rural America, and a courtroom drama with an exciting twist, John Jago's Ghost examines the rivalry between two men for the control of Morwick Farm and the love of a pretty girl."--Jacket.

The Golden Mary is sailing towards the Californian coast. There is a motley group of passengers – a man hoping to make money in the gold rush, an estranged fiancé, a mother and her child heading to meet the father. The ship is tragically struck by an iceberg and sinks. Luckily all the crew and passengers are moved safely to two lifeboats. The people though alive are far from safety as they float stranded on the open sea with minimum food and water between them. While they wait for rescue, they tell each other stories.

J'aime l'automne, cette triste saison va bien aux souvenirs. Quand les arbres n'ont plus de feuilles, quand le ciel conserve encore au crepuscule la teinte rousse qui dore l'herbe fanee, il est doux de regarder s'eteindre tout ce qui naguere brulait encore en vous.

"What do you do when you find yourself imprisoned in your room for 6 weeks? Xavier de Maistre, a 27-year-old Frenchman found himself in this uneasy situation when he was arrested in Turin after a duel, in the Spring of 1790. But with only a butler and a dog for company, Xavier de Maistre managed to fill his time by embarking on a journey around his bedroom, later writing an account of what he had seen. Whether venturing from his bed to his sofa, or even to his mirror, he wears his “traveling outfit”—his favorite pink and blue pajamas. Out of his forced reclusion comes a captivating fantasy—a novel take on travel literature that would inspire many later writers, including Marcel Proust. This edition also contains de Maistre’s A Nocturnal Expedition around My Room. Xavier de Maistre was a military man, who supplemented his army career with short works of fiction."--Publisher description.

The poor relation's story / by Charles Dickens The child's story / by Charles Dickens Somebody's story / by William Moy Thomas The old nurse's story / by Elizabeth Gaskell The host's story / by Edmund Ollier The grandfather's story / by Reverend James White The charwoman's story / by Edmund Saul Dixon The deaf playmate's story / by Harriet Martineau The guest's story / by Samuel Sidney The mother's story / by Eliza Griffiths

xviii, 74 pages ; 20 cm

Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief is a serial novel by James Fennimore Cooper first published by Graham's Magazine in 1843. The novel explores the upper crust of New York Society from the perspective of a woman's handkerchief.

Originally published in 1865, Doctor Marigold was extremely successful, as were Dickens's public performances of a play based on the story--fascinating and easy to read. Doctor (it is his given name) Marigold is a "Cheap Jack" or what we would call a street peddler. Doctor Marigold's fortunes reverse when he adopts a deaf and mute girl whose mother is dead and whose stepfather, owner of a traveling circus, beats her. Dr Marigold recalls an overwhelming passion across two cultures--hearing and deaf.

Stories illuminating the spirit of the season by various authors with a framing story by Dickens, produced for the Christmas edition of his magazine. Angel’s Story Colonel’s Story Old Lady’s Story Over the Way’s Story Scholar’s Story Schoolboy’s Story Squire’s Story Uncle George’s Story