Search results for ""author charles dickens"

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens's tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters - the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.

Read more less

A heartwarming and inspirational Christmas novel in the tradition of The Christmas Box, Grace, The Gift, and Finding Noel. The New York Times bestselling author of The Christmas Box and The Walk series returns with a holiday novel of hope, love, and redemption.Dear Reader, When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Johnson, gave our class the intriguing (if somewhat macabre) assignment of writing our own obituaries. Oddly, I don't remember much of what I wrote about my life, but I do remember how I died: in first place on the final lap of the Daytona 500. At the time, I hadn't considered writing as an occupation, a field with a remarkably low on-the-job casualty rate. What intrigues me most about Mrs. Johnson's assignment is the opportunity she gave us to confront our own legacy. How do we want to be remembered? That question has motivated our species since the beginning of time: from building pyramids to putting our names on skyscrapers. As I began to write this book, I had two objectives: First, I wanted to explore what could happen if someone read their obituary before they died and saw, firsthand, what the world really thought of them. Their legacy. Second, I wanted to write a Christmas story of true redemption. One of my family's holiday traditions is to see a local production of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. I don't know how many times I've seen it (perhaps a dozen), but it still thrills me to see the change that comes over Ebenezer Scrooge as he transforms from a dull, tight-fisted miser into a penitent, "giddy-as-aschoolboy" man with love in his heart. I always leave the show with a smile on my face and a resolve to be a better person. That's what I wanted to share with you, my dear readers, this Christmas—a holiday tale to warm your season, your homes, and your hearts. Merry Christmas

Read more less

Two interesting items: The author's article in New York Archives A letter regarding foundlings in The Riverdale Press In the nineteenth century, foundlings—children abandoned by their desperately poor, typically unmarried mothers, usually shortly after birth—were commonplace in European society. There were asylums in every major city to house abandoned babies, and writers made them the heroes of their fiction, most notably Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. In American cities before the Civil War the situation was different, with foundlings relegated to the poorhouse instead of institutions designed specifically for their care. By the eve of the Civil War, New York City in particular had an epidemic of foundlings on its hands due to the rapid and often interlinked phenomena of urban development, population growth, immigration, and mass poverty. Only then did the city's leaders begin to worry about the welfare and future of its abandoned children. In Abandoned, Julie Miller offers a fascinating, frustrating, and often heartbreaking history of a once devastating, now forgotten social problem that wracked America's biggest metropolis, New York City. Filled with anecdotes and personal stories, Miller traces the shift in attitudes toward foundlings from ignorance, apathy, and sometimes pity for the children and their mothers to that of recognition of the problem as a sign of urban moral decline and in need of systematic intervention. Assistance came from public officials and religious reformers who constructed four institutions: the Nursery and Child's Hospital's foundling asylum, the New York Infant Asylum, the New York Foundling Asylum, and the public Infant Hospital, located on Randall's Island in the East River. Ultimately, the foundling asylums were unable to significantly improve children’s lives, and by the early twentieth century, three out of the four foundling asylums had closed, as adoption took the place of abandonment and foster care took the place of institutions. Today the word foundling has been largely forgotten. Fortunately, Abandoned rescues its history from obscurity.

Read more less

Considered by many to be Dickens' finest novel, Great Expectations traces the growth of the book's narrator, Philip Pirrip (Pip), from a boy of shallow dreams to a man with depth of character. From its famous dramatic opening on the bleak Kentish marshes, the story abounds with some of Dickens' most memorable characters. Among them are the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the mysterious convict Abel Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Haversham and her beautiful ward Estella, Pip's good-hearted room-mate Herbert Pocket and the pompous Pumblechook. As Pip unravels the truth behind his own 'great expectations' in his quest to become a gentleman, the mysteries of the past and the convolutions of fate through a series of thrilling adventures serve to steer him towards maturity and his most important discovery of all - the truth about himself.

Read more less

With an Introduction and Notes by Peter Preston, University of Nottingham. Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and George Cruickshank. The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41), with its combination of the sentimental, the grotesque and the socially concerned, and its story of pursuit and courage, which sets the downtrodden and the plucky against the malevolent and the villainous, was an immediate popular success. Little Nell quickly became one of Dickens' most celebrated characters, who so captured the imagination of his readers that while the novel was being serialised, many of them wrote to him about her fate. Dickens was conscious of the ‘many friends’ the novel had won for him, and ‘the many hearts it turned to me when they were full of private sorrow’, and it remains one of the most familiar and well-loved of his works.

Read more less

'I recommend Hamilton at every opportunity, because he was such a wonderful writer and yet is rather under-read today. All his novels are terrific' Sarah Waters'If you were looking to fly from Dickens to Martin Amis with just one overnight stop, then Hamilton is your man' Nick HornbyPatrick Hamilton's novels were the inspiration for Matthew Bourne's new dance theatre production, The Midnight Bell.West Kensington - grey area of rot, and caretaking, and cat-slinking basements. West Kensington - drab asylum for the driven and cast-off genteel!' Patrick Hamilton was acutely conscious that his third novel (first published in 1928) was longer and 'much grimmer' than his previous and well-received productions. Twopence Coloured is the story of nineteen-year-old Jackie Mortimer, who leaves Hove in search of a life on the London stage, only to become entangled in 'provincial theatre' and complex affairs of the heart with two brothers, Richard and Charles Gissing. The novel, unavailable for many years, is a gimlet-eyed portrait of the theatrical vocation, and fully exhibits Hamilton's celebrated gift for conjuring London - the 'vast, thronged, unknown, hooting, electric-lit, dark-rumbling metropolis.

Read more less

The Victorians excelled at telling ghost stories. In an age of rapid scientific progress the idea of a vindictive past able to reach out and violate the present held a special potential for terror. Throughout the nineteenth century fictional ghost stories developed in parallel with the more general Victorian fascination with death and what lay beyond it. Though they were as much a part of the cultural and literary fabric of the age as imperial confidence, the best of them still retain their original power to surprise and unsettle. The editors map out the development of the ghost story from 1850 to the early years of the twentieth century and demonstrate the importance of this form of short fiction in Victorian popular culture. As well as reprinting stories by supernatural specialists such as J. S. Le Fanu and M. R. James, this selection also emphasizes the key role played by women writers - Elizabeth Gaskell, Mrs Craik, Rhoda Broughton, and Charlotte Riddell, among many others - and offers one or two genuine rarities for the supernatural fiction enthusiast to savour. Other writers represented include Charles Dickens, Henry James, Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and R. L. Stevenson. The editors also provide a fascinating introduction, detailed source notes, and a chronological list of ghost stories collections from 1850 to 1910.

Read more less

This book takes a fascinating look at the iconic figure of the Native American in the British cultural imagination from the Revolutionary War to the early twentieth century, and examining how Native Americans regarded the British, as well as how they challenged their own cultural image in Britain during this period. Kate Flint shows how the image of the Indian was used in English literature and culture for a host of ideological purposes, and she reveals its crucial role as symbol, cultural myth, and stereotype that helped to define British identity and its attitude toward the colonial world.Through close readings of writers such as Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, and D. H. Lawrence, Flint traces how the figure of the Indian was received, represented, and transformed in British fiction and poetry, travelogues, sketches, and journalism, as well as theater, paintings, and cinema. She describes the experiences of the Ojibwa and Ioway who toured Britain with George Catlin in the 1840s; the testimonies of the Indians in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show; and the performances and polemics of the Iroquois poet Pauline Johnson in London. Flint explores transatlantic conceptions of race, the role of gender in writings by and about Indians, and the complex political and economic relationships between Britain and America.The Transatlantic Indian, 1776-1930 argues that native perspectives are essential to our understanding of transatlantic relations in this period and the development of transnational modernity.

Read more less

Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B. Cook Illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz). Following the success of Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby was hailed as a comic triumph and firmly established Dickens as a 'literary gentleman'. It has a full supporting cast of delectable characters that range from the iniquitous Wackford Squeers and his family, to the delightful Mrs Nickleby, taking in the eccentric Crummles and his travelling players, the Mantalinis, the Kenwigs and many more. Combining these with typically Dickensian elements of burlesque and farce, the novel is eminently suited to dramatic adaptation. So great was the impact as it left Dickens' pen that many pirated versions appeared in print before the original was even finished. Often neglected by critics, Nicholas Nickleby has never ceased to delight readers and is widely regarded as one of the greatest comic masterpieces of nineteenth-centure literature.

Read more less

"Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night," wrote the poet Rupert Brooke. Before the age of electricity, the nighttime city was a very different place to the one we know today - home to the lost, the vagrant and the noctambulant. Matthew Beaumont recounts an alternative history of London by focusing on those of its denizens who surface on the streets when the sun's down. If nightwalking is a matter of "going astray" in the streets of the metropolis after dark, then nightwalkers represent some of the most suggestive and revealing guides to the neglected and forgotten aspects of the city.In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations and the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and, among the lamp-lit literary throng, the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens. We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to others. In each case, the city is revealed as a place divided between work and pleasure, the affluent and the indigent, where the entitled and the desperate jostle in the streets.With a foreword and afterword by Will Self, Nightwalking is a captivating literary portrait of the writers who explore the city at night and the people they meet.

Read more less

Key Stage 2 Comprehension provides a unique collection of stimulating texts that appeal strongly to both boys and girls, together with questions that both build and stretch comprehension skills and widen vocabulary. Comprising four one-per-child activity books and providing more than 72 texts in total, the series encourages children to pay close attention to literal meaning, make inferences and deductions, observe how writing is structured and identify literary devices. A separate Teacher's Guide is also available. Book 4 reflects the broadening interests and word power of young people who will soon move to secondary school, or have now done so. It includes: non-fiction texts covering the discovery in Russia of a long-extinct mammoth, shells and their origins and the life of explorer Robert Scott, the poignant 'last letter' from Scott to his widow, classic poetry from Rudyard Kipling, Edward Thomas, Edward Lear and William Wordsworth, a short extract from the play 'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare, riveting fiction from R.L. Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, Daniel Defoe and Charles Dickens and absorbing autobiographies and biographical fiction from Roald Dahl and Alison Prince.

Read more less

Lyme, Connecticut, early nineteenth century. Elisha Ely Morgan is a young farm boy who has witnessed firsthand the terror of the War of 1812. Troubled by a tumultuous home life ruled by the fists of their tempestuous father, Ely's two older brothers have both left their pastoral boyhoods to seek manhood through sailing. One afternoon, the Morgan family receives a letter with the news that one brother is lost at sea; the other is believed to be dead. Scrimping as much savings as a farm boy can muster, Ely spends nearly every penny he has to become a sailor on a square-rigged ship, on a route from New York to London—a route he hopes will lead to his vanished brother, Abraham. Learning the brutal trade of a sailor, Ely takes quickly to sea-life, but his focus lies with finding Abraham. Following a series of cryptic clues regarding his brother's fate, Ely becomes entrenched in a mystery deeper than he can imagine. As he feels himself drawing closer to an answer, Ely climbs the ranks to become a captain, experiences romance, faces a mutiny, meets Queen Victoria, and befriends historical legends such as Charles Dickens in his raucous quest.

Read more less

Study of the genesis of the novel is facilitated by the reproduction of Dickens’ working plans and, for the first time, by some thousands of meticulous textual notes. "Backgrounds" offers all of Dickens’ correspondence about Bleak House as well as contextual materials that document the Victorian controversy over pollution, a theme central to the novel, and present contemporary attitudes toward the government, the courts, and the police, to enhance the setting of the story. Also featured are several hundred annotations which fully elucidate for today’s readers the allusions and topical references in this remarkably allusive Victorian masterpiece. Especially helpful is a clear exposition of the nature of law procedures in the Court of Chancery, which is crucial to an understanding of the central action of the story. "Critical essays" reprinted here include interpretations by G. K. Chesterton, J. Hillis Miller, George Ford, A. O. J. Cockshut, W. J. Harvey, H. M. Daleski, and Ian Ousby.

Read more less

Life in a workhouse during the Victorian and Edwardian eras has been popularly characterised as a brutal existence. Charles Dickens famously portrayed workhouse inmates as being dirty, neglected, overworked and at the mercy of exploitative masters. While there were undoubtedly establishments that conformed to this stereotype, there is also evidence of a more enlightened approach that has not yet come to public attention. This book establishes a true picture of what life was like in a workhouse, of why inmates entered them and of what they had to endure in their day-to-day routine.A comprehensive overview of the workshouse system gives a real and compelling insight into social and moral reasons behind their growth in the Victorian era, while the kind of distinctions that were drawn between inmates are looked into, which, along with the social stigma of having been a workhouse inmate, tell us much about class attitudes of the time.The book also looks at living conditions and duties of the staff who, in many ways, were prisoners of the workhouse. Michelle Higgs combines thorough research with a fresh outlook on a crucial period in British history, and in doing so paints a vivid portrait of an era and its social standards that continues to fascinate, and tells us much about the society we live in today.

Read more less

"Five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has even been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it." --Samuel Johnson Ghosts are woven into the very fabric of life. In Britain, every town, village, and great house has a spectral resident, and their enduring popularity in literature, art, folklore, and film attests to their continuing power to fascinate, terrify, and inspire. Our conceptions of ghosts--the fears they provoke, the forms they take--are connected to the conventions and beliefs of each particular era, from the marauding undead of the Middle Ages to the psychologically charged presences of our own age. The ghost is no less than the mirror of the times. Organized chronologically, this new cultural history features a dazzling range of artists and writers, including William Hogarth, William Blake, Henry Fuseli, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Susan Hiller and Jeremy Deller; John Donne, William Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Muriel Spark, Hilary Mantel, and Sarah Waters.

Read more less

Setting off on foot from Winchester, Ken Haigh hikes across southern England, retracing one of the traditional routes that medieval pilgrims followed to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Walking in honour of his father, a staunch Anglican who passed away before they could begin their trip together, Haigh wonders: Is there a place in the modern secular world for pilgrimage? On his journey, he sorts through his own spiritual aimlessness while crossing paths with writers like Anthony Trollope, John Keats, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens, and, of course, Geoffrey Chaucer. Part travelogue, part memoir, and part literary history, On Foot to Canterbury is engaging and delightful. “My father didn’t need this walk, not the way I do. For him it would have been a fun way to spend some time with his son. He had, I begin to realize, a talent for living in the moment… Perhaps a pilgrimage would help me find happiness. Perhaps I could walk my way into a better frame of mind, and somehow along the road to Canterbury I would find a new purpose for my life. It was worth a shot.” Audio edition from PRH available from Audible, Kobo, Google, and Apple Books.

Read more less

Pawfect Love combines adorable photos of unlikely animal pairs with affectionate quotes to share with the one you love--differences and all! With over 150 pages of fur-cuteness, grown-ups and kids will love this coffee table book. From a bunny snuggling with a duck to a kitty playing with a deer to a puppy having fun with a hamster, these furry pairs remind us that not being exactly the same is part of what makes a relationship great.Spotlighting topics such as commitment, happiness, and togetherness, the quotes are by an array of beloved writers, such as: C.S. Lewis, Katharine Hepburn, and Donald Miller Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Oscar Wilde, and many more Delightful photos from the mother-son photography team Warren Photographic humorously communicate the lighter side of your heart's affection in this fun and unique gift book. Pawfect Love is a fun gift for: couples on their engagement, wedding day, or anniversary a significant other on Valentine's Day, a birthday, or any ordinary day people who love animals and animal photography One of the best things about love is enjoying each other's uniqueness. Our animal friends have discovered this already! So here's to our differences! We wouldn't want it any other way--paws down.

Read more less

Especially evident in Victorian-era writings is a rhetorical tendency to liken adults to children and children to adults. Claudia Nelson examines this literary phenomenon and explores the ways in which writers discussed the child-adult relationship during this period. Though far from ubiquitous, the terms "child-woman", "child-man", and "old-fashioned child" appears often enough in Victorian writings to prompt critical questions about the motivations and meanings of such generational border crossings. Nelson carefully considers the use of these terms and connects invocations of age inversion to developments in post - Darwinian scientific thinking and attitudes about gender roles, social class, sexuality, power, and economic mobility. She brilliantly analyzes canonical works of Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, William Makepeace Thackeray, Bram Stoker, and Robert Louis Stevenson alongside lesser - known writings to demonstrate the diversity of literary age inversion and its profound influence on Victorian culture. By considering the full context of Victorian age inversion, "Precocious Children and Childish Adults" illuminates the complicated pattern of anxiety and desire that creates such ambiguity in the writings of the time. Scholars of Victorian literature and culture, as well as readers interested in children's literature, childhood studies, and gender studies, will welcome this excellent work from a major figure in the field.

Read more less

The implicit link between white women and "the dark races" recurs persistently in nineteenth-century English fiction. Imperialism at Home examines the metaphorical use of race by three nineteenth-century women novelists: Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and George Eliot. Susan Meyer argues that each of these domestic novelists uses race relations as a metaphor through which to explore the relationships between men and women at home in England. In the fiction of, for example, Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens, as in nineteenth-century culture more generally, the subtle and not-so-subtle comparison of white women and people of color is used to suggest their mutual inferiority. The Bronte sisters and George Eliot responded to this comparison, Meyer contends, transforming it for their own purposes. Through this central metaphor, these women novelists work out a sometimes contentious relationship to established hierarchies of race and gender. Their feminist impulses, in combination with their use of race as a metaphor, Meyer argues, produce at times a surprising, if partial, critique of empire. Through readings of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda, and Charlotte Brontë's African juvenilia, Meyer traces the aesthetically and ideologically complex workings of the racial metaphor. Her analysis is supported by careful attention to textual details and thorough grounding in recent scholarship on the idea of race, and on literature and imperialism.

Read more less

The implicit link between white women and "the dark races" recurs persistently in nineteenth-century English fiction. Imperialism at Home examines the metaphorical use of race by three nineteenth-century women novelists: Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, and George Eliot. Susan Meyer argues that each of these domestic novelists uses race relations as a metaphor through which to explore the relationships between men and women at home in England. In the fiction of, for example, Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens, as in nineteenth-century culture more generally, the subtle and not-so-subtle comparison of white women and people of color is used to suggest their mutual inferiority. The Bronte sisters and George Eliot responded to this comparison, Meyer contends, transforming it for their own purposes. Through this central metaphor, these women novelists work out a sometimes contentious relationship to established hierarchies of race and gender. Their feminist impulses, in combination with their use of race as a metaphor, Meyer argues, produce at times a surprising, if partial, critique of empire. Through readings of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda, and Charlotte Brontë's African juvenilia, Meyer traces the aesthetically and ideologically complex workings of the racial metaphor. Her analysis is supported by careful attention to textual details and thorough grounding in recent scholarship on the idea of race, and on literature and imperialism.

Read more less

A curious gem of 19th-century gothic fiction Cecil Dreeme is one of the queerest American novels of the 19th century. This edition, which includes a new introduction contextualizing the sexual history of the period and queer longings of the book, brings a rare, almost forgotten, sensational gothic novel set in New York’s West Village back to light. Published posthumously in 1861, the novel centers on Robert Byng, a young man who moves back to New York after traveling abroad and finds himself unmarried and underemployed, adrift in the heathenish dens of lower Manhattan. When he takes up rooms in “Chrysalis College”—a thinly veiled version of the 19th-century New York University building in Washington Square—he quickly finds himself infatuated with a young painter lodging there, named Cecil Dreeme. As their friendship grows and the novel unfolds against the backdrop of the bohemian West Village, Robert confesses that he “loves Cecil with a love passing the love of women.” Yet, there are dark forces at work in the form of the sinister and magnetic Densdeth, a charismatic figure of bad intention, who seeks to ensnare Robert for his own. Full of romantic entanglements, mistaken identity, blackmail, and the dramas of temptation and submission, Cecil Dreeme is a gothic novel at its finest. Poetically written—with flashes of Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde—Cecil Dreeme is an early example of that rare bird, a queer novel from the 19th century.

Read more less

Board: AQA Examination: English Language & Literature Specification: GCSE 9-1 Set Text covered: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Type: Revision Cards New GCSE Grades 9-1 Revision Cards with free revision app, perfect to support your revision for the closed book AQA GCSE English Literature exam. Perfect for last-minute revision; Clear information with at-a-glance chronology of the text A tight focus on key events, characters, themes, context, language and structure. With lots of quiz cards to help you demonstrate your knowledge and understanding you can't go wrong. These cards can be used alongside our best-selling Study Guides with matching colour coded sections or they can be used independently as a stand-alone revision resource. Snap it! Read it, snap it on your phone, revise it...helps you retain key facts The accompanying free app uses cutting-edge technology to help you revise on-the-go to: Use the free, personalised digital revision planner and get stuck into the quick tests to check your understanding Download our free revision cards which you can save to your phone to help you revise on the go Implement 'active' revision techniques - giving you lots of tips and tricks to help the knowledge sink in

Read more less

Young Pip seems destined to follow in his family's humble footsteps. Then one day, an anonymous gift suddenly transforms him into a rich young man . . . but will it also transform his life for the better? Dickens's great bildungsroman, featuring iconic characters like Miss Havisham, is an enduring favorite in schools,libraries, and homes.

Read more less

A revelatory resituation of Van Gogh’s familiar works in the company of the surprising variety of nineteenth-century art and literature he most revered Vincent van Gogh’s (1853–1890) idiosyncratic style grew out of a deep admiration for and connection to the nineteenth-century art world. This fresh look at Van Gogh’s influences explores the artist’s relationship to the Barbizon School painters Jean-François Millet and Georges Michel—Van Gogh’s self-proclaimed mentors—as well as to Realists like Jean-François Raffaëlli and Léon Lhermitte. New scholarship offers insights into Van Gogh’s emulation of Adolphe Monticelli, his absorption of the Hague School through Anton Mauve and Jozef Israëls, and his keen interest in the work of the Impressionists. This copiously illustrated volume also discusses Van Gogh’s allegiance to the colorism of Eugène Delacroix, as well as his alliance with the Realist literature of Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Although Van Gogh has often been portrayed as an insular and tortured savant, Through Vincent’s Eyes provides a fascinating deep dive into the artist’s sources of inspiration that reveals his expansive interest in the artistic culture of his time.Published in association with the Santa Barbara Museum of ArtPublished in association with the Santa Barbara Museum of ArtExhibition Schedule:Columbus Museum of Art (November 12, 2021–February 6, 2022)Santa Barbara Museum of Art (February 27–May 22, 2022)

Read more less

La intriga parte de un extraño asesinato y se alimenta de una sociedad corrupta e hipócrita.Cuando en una respetable mansión de Bedford Square se encuentra el cadáver de un hombre asesinado, el más experto y conflictivo policía victoriano de Londres, Thomas Pitt, acude inmediatamente al lugar de los hechos. Tanto la casa como una cajita de rapé encontrada en el cuerpo pertenecen al muy respetado general Balantyne, amigo de Charlotte, la esposa de Pitt, y ampliamente conocido en los mejores círculos sociales. A medida que se va involucrando en la investigación de este asesinato y en un caso de chantaje, Pitt se verá inmerso en medio de una terrible lucha para salvar lo que siempre ha intentado preservar: la integridad de la policía de Bow Street. Con un extraño asesinato y una corrupta e hipócrita sociedad victoriana, Anne Perry construye una novela de intriga que impresionaría al propio Charles Dickens. New York Times Books Review

Read more less

Maybe Jesus was joking, the disciples didn’t know what they were doing and the New Testament is a lot funnier than you might think. You would think it weird if someone suddenly ascended into heaven, right? Reading between the lines, do we detect a touch of rivalry between Peter and John? And surely the lack of parables in the latter’s mystical tome is simply crying out to be redressed . . . In this sparklingly witty book, BBC sitcom writer James Cary gives us a new and liberating way of looking at the gospel as he entertainingly relates it to a modern context, with references ranging from Charles Dickens to The Vicar of Dibley. Cheerfully playing around with the text, he takes the Bible seriously but allows us to laugh at our own petty vanities and foibles – and be enlightened in the process. The Gospel According to a Sitcom Writer is ideal for anyone wanting to liven up their Bible reading and looking for new ways to be thrilled by this sacred text. It’s also perfect for priests, pastors, youth leaders and all those involved in ministry and giving sermons, as James Cary shows using comedy and humour is a brilliant way to communicate the gospel. Warm, funny and full of brilliant insight and Christian humour, The Gospel According to a Sitcom Writer will make you laugh out loud and shake your head in awe. You’ll never read the Bible the same way again.

Read more less

Complete and unabridged.One of BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World.Dickens exposes the corrupting power of money in his last complete novel, Our Mutual Friend, with its expansive cast of characters and interweaving plots.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has an afterword by Lucinda Dickens Hawksley and original illustrations by Marcus Stone.John Harmon made his fortune collecting ‘dust’. On his death his estranged son is due to inherit his wealth on the condition that he marry Bella Wilfer, a young woman who he has never even met. But when his son is presumed dead, John’s riches pass to his servants Mr. and Mrs. Boffin and they in turn take Bella into their own home. They hire a secretive young man, John Rokesmith, to be Mr. Boffin’s secretary – but what is this man’s real identity and what is his interest in Bella?

Read more less

From the moment that he meets an escaped convict in a dark and lonely graveyard, Pip's life becomes a myriad of unanswered questions.What is Miss Havisham's hidden secret? Why is the beautiful Estella so cruel? Who is his mysterious benefactor? This fabulous interpretation introduces children to some of Dickens' best-known characters, bound together with haunting illustrations. TreeTops Greatest Stories offers children some of the worlds best-loved tales in a collection of timeless classics. Top children's authors and talented illustrators work together to bring to life our literary heritage for a new generation, engaging and delighting children. The books are carefully levelled, making it easy to match every child to the right book. Each book contains inside cover notes to help children explore the content, supporting their reading development. Teaching notes on Oxford Owl offer cross-curricular links and activities to support guided reading, writing, speaking and listening.

Read more less

Robin Lloyd’s debut novel opens in Lyme, Connecticut, in the early nineteenth century. Elisha Ely Morgan is a young farm boy who has witnessed firsthand the terror of the War of 1812. Troubled by a tumultuous home life ruled by the fists of their tempestuous father, Ely's two older brothers have both left their pastoral boyhoods to seek manhood through sailing. One afternoon, the Morgan family receives a letter with the news that one brother is lost at sea; the other is believed to be dead. Scrimping as much savings as a farm boy can muster, Ely spends nearly every penny he has to become a sailor on a square-rigged ship, on a route from New York to London—a route he hopes will lead to his vanished brother, Abraham. Learning the brutal trade of a sailor, Ely takes quickly to sea-life, but his focus lies with finding Abraham. Following a series of cryptic clues regarding his brother's fate, Ely becomes entrenched in a mystery deeper than he can imagine. As he feels himself drawing closer to an answer, Ely climbs the ranks to become a captain, experiences romance, faces a mutiny, meets Queen Victoria, and befriends historical legends such as Charles Dickens in his raucous quest.

Read more less

Brought to you by Penguin.'It is at Christmas time that want is most keenly felt, and abundance rejoices.'Charles Dickens, 'A Christmas Carol' 1843'Yeah, and a partridge up your pear tree, an' all.'Derek Trotter, 'Christmas Crackers', 1981'Think of this memoir as a Christmas special in book form, from someone who has been involved in a few of those and understands a bit about the concept. But a Christmas special very much like Only Fools and Horses, in the sense that the stories will be always heading outwards, ranging far and wide and well beyond the traditional festive gags involving giblets left in turkeys.As I sift through various festive-related episodes in my career, loosening the ribbons, parting the wrapping paper, I'll be doing my best to reach any relevant conclusions about life, work and the meaning of it all that I can usefully pass on to you - baubles of wisdom if you like. Or certainly baubles. You'll learn why I have the perfect face to play Scrooge. And if you're lucky I'll also share what it's like to fly in a helicopter with my old mucker Tom Cruise. Merry Christmas, you plonkers.'© David Jason 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Read more less

Michael Gove is one of the most recognisable faces in British politics - and one of the most divisive. Whether it's taking on the education `blob', acting as a frontman for the Brexit campaign or orchestrating one of the bloodiest political assassinations in the history of British politics, Gove is a man who makes things happen. But it was almost so different, and his story, from being born into care to standing for the leadership of the Conservative Party, could have come straight from the pages of a Charles Dickens novel. A charming man to his friends, and a cold-blooded zealot to his enemies, Gove provokes a reaction from everyone, be it loyalty, anger, respect or fury. Love him or hate him, it's impossible to deny Gove's impact on the UK over the past ten years, and, with Brexit still up in the air, he will continue to play a key role in the future of the country. Political journalist Owen Bennett's groundbreaking biography takes in original research as well as interviews with current and former Cabinet ministers, ex-colleagues from the BBC and The Times, and numerous other key players in Gove's life story. Lively and insightful in equal measure, Michael Gove: A Man in a Hurry reveals what turned the adopted son of an Aberdeen fishing family into one of the key political figures of the decade.

Read more less

From spooky stories and real-life ghost hunting, to shows about murder and serial killers, we are fascinated by death - and we owe these modern obsessions to the Victorian age. Death and the Victorians explores a period in history when the search for the truth about what lies beyond our mortal realm was matched only by the imagination and invention used to find it. Walk among London’s festering graveyards, where the dead were literally rising from the grave. Visit the Paris Morgue, where thousands flocked to view the spectacle of death every single day. Lift the veil on how spirits were invited into the home, secret societies taught ways to survive death, and the latest science and technology was applied to provide proof of the afterlife. Find out why the Victorian era is considered the golden age of the ghost story, exemplified by tales from the likes of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oscar Wilde and Henry James. Discover how the birth of the popular press nurtured our taste for murder and that Jack the Ripper was actually a work of pure Gothic horror fiction crafted by cynical Victorian newspapermen. Death and the Victorians exposes the darker side of the nineteenth century, a time when the living were inventing incredible ways to connect with the dead that endure to this day.

Read more less

Karol Charles does not have time for ghosts. It’s Christmas Eve and she’s at the office. Sure, her kids thought she’d be making cookies with them back at home, but this is important. This is what it means to “have it all.” Then, a familiar cough from the adjacent room jolts her out of her work. It can’t be possible. Marley is dead. She has been for years.With Marley’s death, Karol is now running their law firm by herself. But she still strives to live by her best friend and law partner’s creed: The job makes the money and the money buys the things that make your family happy. Working all the time is a sacrifice Karol has made willingly.However, Karol’s life takes a drastic turn when she falls outside of Rockefeller Center and has to be hospitalized. But something is wrong with this hospital. There’s a ghost in the waiting room and another magical visitor in the lobby. With them, Karol revisits long-forgotten memories and begins to unravel the truth about her current situation—and a future that is anything but cheery and bright.In this modern twist on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Karol’s journey through her past, present, and future reveals a difficult yet liberating truth: It is far better to have what matters than to have it all.

Read more less

Sarah Calhoun is the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Elector Andrew Calhoun, one of Appalachee’s military heroes and one of the electors who gets to decide who will next ascend as the Emperor of the New World. None of that matters to Sarah. She has a natural talent for hexing and one bad eye, and all she wants is to be left alone—especially by outsiders. But Sarah’s world gets turned on its head at the Nashville Tobacco Fair when a Yankee wizard-priest tries to kidnap her. Sarah fights back with the aid of a mysterious monk named Thalanes, who is one of the not-quite-human Firstborn, the Moundbuilders of the Ohio. It is Thalanes who reveals to Sarah a secret heritage she never dreamed could be hers. Now on a desperate quest with Thalanes to claim this heritage, she is hunted by the Emperor’s bodyguard of elite dragoons, as well as by darker things—shapeshifting Mockers and undead Lazars, and behind them a power more sinister still. If Sarah cannot claim her heritage, it may mean the end to her, her family—and to the world where she is just beginning to find her place. Praise for Witchy Eye and D.J. Butler: “. . . you can’t stop yourself from taking another bite . . . and another . . . and another. . . . I didn’t want to stop reading. . . . Kudos!” —R.A. Salvatore, New York Times best-selling author “Excellent book. I am impressed by the creativity and the depth of the world building. Dave Butler is a great storyteller.” —Larry Correia “Witchy Eye is an intricate and imaginative alternate history with a cast of characters and quirky situations that would make a Dickens novel proud.” —Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times best-selling author of Eternity's Mind “Butler’s fantasy is by turns sardonic and lighthearted; ghoulish shadows claw into the most remote areas and heroism bursts out of the most unlikely people. Sarah is the epitome of the downtrodden hero who refuses to give up until she gets what she needs, and her story will appeal to fantasy readers of all stripes.”—Publishers Weekly “This is a breathtaking heroic saga that pays off in a really satisfying way. Between a world so deep you could get lost in it and a massive, distinct cast, Witchy Eye seems poised to bring Butler’s work to a wider audience. . . . With a book like this one, it’s an audience he definitely deserves.” —BarnesandNoble.com “David’s a pro storyteller, and you’re in for a great ride.” —Larry Dixon “. . . a fascinating, grittily flavored world of living legends. Hurry up and write the next one, Dave.” —Cat Rambo, author of Beasts of Tabat “This is enchanting! I’d love to see more.” —Mercedes Lackey, New York Times best-selling author “Goblin Market meets Magical Musketpunk . . . A great ride that also manages to cover some serious cultural terrain.” —Charles E. Gannon, author of the thrice-Nebula nominated Caine Riordan series “Witchy Eye is a brilliant blend of historical acumen and imagination, a tour-de-force that is at once full of surprises and ultimately heartwarming. This is your chance to discover one of the finest new stars writing today!” –David Farland, New York Times best-selling author “A gritty, engrossing mash-up of history, fantasy, and magic. Desperate characters careen from plot twist to plot twist until few are left standing.” —Mario Acevedo, author of Rescue from Planet Pleasure. “Captivating characters. Superb world-building. Awesome magic. Butler fuses fantasy and history effortlessly, creating a fascinating new American epic. Not to be missed!” —Christopher Husberg, author of Duskfall “[A] unique alternative-history that is heavily influence by urban and traditional fantasy and steeped in the folklore of the Appalachians. . . . Fans of urban fantasy looking to take a chance on something with a twist on a historical setting may find this novel worth their time.” —Booklist

Read more less

A curious gem of 19th-century gothic fiction Cecil Dreeme is one of the queerest American novels of the 19th century. This edition, which includes a new introduction contextualizing the sexual history of the period and queer longings of the book, brings a rare, almost forgotten, sensational gothic novel set in New York’s West Village back to light. Published posthumously in 1861, the novel centers on Robert Byng, a young man who moves back to New York after traveling abroad and finds himself unmarried and underemployed, adrift in the heathenish dens of lower Manhattan. When he takes up rooms in “Chrysalis College”—a thinly veiled version of the 19th-century New York University building in Washington Square—he quickly finds himself infatuated with a young painter lodging there, named Cecil Dreeme. As their friendship grows and the novel unfolds against the backdrop of the bohemian West Village, Robert confesses that he “loves Cecil with a love passing the love of women.” Yet, there are dark forces at work in the form of the sinister and magnetic Densdeth, a charismatic figure of bad intention, who seeks to ensnare Robert for his own. Full of romantic entanglements, mistaken identity, blackmail, and the dramas of temptation and submission, Cecil Dreeme is a gothic novel at its finest. Poetically written—with flashes of Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde—Cecil Dreeme is an early example of that rare bird, a queer novel from the 19th century.

Read more less

La hermana de nieve refleja el sentimiento de unas navidades bucólicas que todo lector reconoce en Canción de Navidad, de Charles Dickens.El libro que debes leer estas Navidades!Se acerca la Navidad. Christian cumple once años. Normalmente este es su día favorito de todo el año, sin duda el mejor. Los dulces navideños, el calor chispeante que desprende la chimenea y el esperado árbol de Navidad acompañan al pequeño en este día tan especial. Sin embargo, este año todo es distinto. Christian y su familia están de duelo por la falta de su hermana mayor. Parece que las navidades hayan sido canceladas este año.Un día el pequeño conoce a Hedwig y empieza a creer que quizás, después de todo, las navidades van a volver a ser como antes. Pero hay algo extraño en casa de su amiga Hedwig. Por qué ella siempre se muestra tan misteriosa? Quién es el hombre que los espía constantemente?Escrito por Maja Lunde e ilustrado por Lisa Aisato, ganadora de diversos

Read more less

The field of lesbian studies is often framed in terms of the relation between lesbianism and invisibility. Annamarie Jagose here takes a radical new approach, suggesting that the focus on invisibility and visibility is perhaps not the most productive way of looking at lesbian representability. Jagose argues that the theoretical preoccupation with metaphors of visibility is part of the problem it attempts to remedy. In her account, the regulatory difference between heterosexuality and homosexuality relies less on codes of visual recognition than on a cultural adherence to the force of first order, second order sexual sequence. As Jagose points out, sequence does not simply specify what comes before and what comes after; it also implies precedence: what comes first and what comes second. Jagose reads canonical novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and Daphne du Maurier, drawing upon their elaboration of sexual sequence. In these innovative readings, tropes such as first and second, origin and outcome, and heterosexuality and homosexuality are shown to reinforce heterosexual precedence. Inconsequence intervenes in current debates in lesbian historiography, taking as its pivotal moment the fin-de-siècle phenomenon of the sexological codification of sexual taxonomies and concluding with a reading of a post-Kinsey pulp sexological text. Throughout, Jagose reminds us that categories of sexual registration are always back-formations, secondary, and belated, not only for those who identify as lesbian but also for all sexual subjects.

Read more less

Night Boat to New York: Steamboats on the Connecticut, 1824-1931, is a portrait of the vanished steamboat days–when a procession of stately sidewheelers plied between Hartford and New York City, docking at Peck’s Slip on the East River in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. At one time, Hartford could boast two thousand steamboat arrivals and departures in a year. Altogether, some thirty-five large steamboats were in service on the Connecticut River in these years, largely on the Hartford to New York City route. These Long Island Sound steamers, unlike the tubby, wedding cake dowagers of Western waters, were long, sleek craft, with sharp prows cutting a neat wake as they cruised along. Departing each afternoon from State Street or Talcott Street wharf in Hartford, the “night boats” reached New York at daybreak, inaugurating a pattern of city commuting that continues to this day. Steamboating not only brought people and goods—Colt’s firearms and Essex’s pianos—down river to New York for export to world markets, but also helped America’s inland “spa Culture” transplant itself to the seashore, making steamboating not just convenient transportation but also a social phenomenon noted by such writers as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. No wonder crowds wept in the fall of 1931, when the last steamboats, made obsolete by the automobile, churned away from the dock and headed downriver—never to return.

Read more less

Little treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader. Dicken's first novel began as a romp, a series of amusing observations based on the travels of Mr Pickwick and his friends Nathaniel Winkle, Augustus Snodgrass, Tracy Tupman and valet Sam Weller. Their adventures increasingly highlight hypocrisy and avarice in the lives of everyday folk, beset by the doubtful actions of lawyers, politicians and local dignitaries. The reprehensible Alfred Jingle is often encountered in bizarre and awkward scenes, a lightning rod for the ills in society where marriage is not always accompanied by love, the victim not the guilty are imprisoned, and the poor are treated with barely concealed contempt. Pickwick's jovial stature allows Dickens a light touch on his social commentary and Pickwick Papers remains one of his most popular books.

Read more less

The Offenses Against the Person Act of 1828 opened magistrates’ courts to abused working-class wives. Newspapers in turn reported on these proceedings, and in this way the Victorian scrutiny of domestic conduct began. But how did popular fiction treat “private” family violence? Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction traces novelists’ engagement with the wife-assault debates in the public press between 1828 and the turn of the century. Lisa Surridge examines the early works of Charles Dickens and reads Dombey and Son and Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in the context of the intense debates on wife assault and manliness in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Surridge explores George Eliot’s Janet’s Repentance in light of the parliamentary debates on the 1857 Divorce Act. Marital cruelty trials provide the structure for both Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and Anthony Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right. Locating the New Woman fiction of Mona Caird and the reassuring detective investigations of Sherlock Holmes in the context of late-Victorian feminism and the great marriage debate in the Daily Telegraph, Surridge illustrates how fin-de-siècle fiction brought male sexual violence and the viability of marriage itself under public scrutiny. Bleak Houses thus demonstrates how Victorian fiction was concerned about the wife-assault debates of the nineteenth century, debates which both constructed and invaded the privacy of the middle-class home.

Read more less

Introduction and Notes by Dinny Thorold, University of Westminster. Illustrated by F. Walker and Maurice Greiffenhagen. Unusually for Dickens, Hard Times is set, not in London, but in the imaginary mid-Victorian Northern industrial town of Coketown with its blackened factories, downtrodden workers and polluted environment. This is the soulless domain of the strict utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind and the heartless factory owner Josiah Bounderby. However human joy is not excluded thanks to 'Mr Sleary's Horse-Riding' circus, a gin-soaked and hilarious troupe of open-hearted and affectionate people who act as an antidote to all the drudgery and misery endured by the ordinary citizens of Coketown. Macaulay attacked Hard Times for its ‘sullen socialism’, but 20th-century critics such as George Bernard Shaw and F.R. Leavis have praised this book in the highest terms, while readers the world over have found inspiration and enjoyment from what is both Dickens’ shortest completed novel and also one of his important statements on Victorian society.

Read more less

A Christmas Carol has had an enduring influence on the way we think about the traditions of Christmas ever since it was first published in December 1843. Dickens's story of solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, has been adapted into countless film and stage versions and is today the most famous and loved of all Christmas tales.

Read more less

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.’ Set in fictitious Coketown, England during the Industrial Revolution of the 1850s, Dickens wished to expose the enormous gulf between the rich and poor through his writing. In Hard Times, the social and moral purpose of his work is at its most evident. Openly ironic and satirical in its tone, Dickens suggests a mechanization of society, where the wealthy are ruthless and uncharitable towards those less fortunate than themselves. Siblings Louisa and Tom Gradgrind are raised by their father, a harsh and pragmatic educator and his influence means that they go on to lead lives that are lacking in all areas. Louisa marries the arrogant and greedy Josiah Bounderby, ending in an unhappy pairing and the unfeeling and villainous Tom robs his own brother-in-law’s bank. As their father watches their plight, he realises that his own principles may have led to their downfall.

Read more less

Countdown to Christmas with 24 illustrated storybooks!This luxury advent calendar contains a beautifully illustrated storybook behind each window to fire up children's imaginations in the build up to the big day. Perfect for bedtime reading and cosy story times.The collection of 24 books includes magical tales of princes and princesses, dragons and dinosaurs. As the big day approaches, you'll discover festive treats, including a retelling of Jingle Bells, with a QR code so you can sing along; and Charles Dickens' classic ghost story, A Christmas Carol, specially rewritten for little ones. The full set of 24 books forms a miniature library that can be treasured and enjoyed for many years to come.The stories you can enjoy are:1. Beauty and the Beast2. Puss in Boots3. The Lion and the Mouse4. A Christmas Carol5. The Three Wishes6. The Boy Who Cried Wolf7. The Golden Goose8. The Story of Coppelia9. The Christmas Cobwebs10. The Dinosaur who met Santa Claus11. The Tin Soldier12. Jingle Bells13. The Dragon Painter14. The Genie and the Bottle15. The Hare and the Tortoise16. The Magic Toymaker17. The Snow Queen18. The Rabbit's Tale19. Swan Lake20. Sleeping Beauty21. The Firebird22. The Twelve Dancing Princesses23. The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse24. The Friendly Dragon

Read more less

Escrita por uno de los más importantes teóricos de la literatura de todo el mundo, la presente obra constituye una introducción amplia, fácilmente comprensible y amena. Recorre la historia de la novela inglesa, desde Daniel Defoe (finales del XVII) hasta la actualidad.Siguiendo el modelo empleado en su enormemente popular Introducción a la Teoría de la Literatura, Terry Eagleton comienza resumiendo los aspectos fundamentales de una teoría de la novela, con una sinopsis de lo que ha escrito sobre este género literario toda una pléyade de eminentes teóricos de la literatura. A continuación, se incluye una serie de capítulos que versan sobre los novelistas más relevantes, como Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, las hermanas Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, James Joyce y Viginia Woolf. En cada capítulo se discuten las principales obras del autor en cuestión, además de esbozar los hitos fundamentales del contexto histórico en que escribe y de co

Read more less

Publicado en 1913 dentro de la serie de la Home University Library of Modern Knowledge, en La Época Victoriana en la literatura G. K. Chesterton realiza un mordaz repaso del espíritu de las letras de este período. Pero el suyo no es un relato al uso; no podía serlo en su caso. Como él mismo dice en la obra: lo más cerca que cualquier hombre honesto puede estar de eso que llamamos ?imparcialidad?, es confesar que está siendo parcial. Principio que aplica a rajatabla, demostrando que fue un pensador comprometido con los grandes problemas del hombre de su tiempo.Desde la primera página, ya nos anuncia que rechaza la perspectiva cronológica, para analizar y comentar la obra de autores como Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, las hermanas Brontë o Charles Dickens, entre muchos otros. Aunque su mirada va más allá de la mera observación y lo aparente, esbozando un convincente retrato de qué fueron los victorianos: hombres y mujeres que, en su opinión, se alejaron de un sentido espiritual

Read more less

Mill Power documents the making of a national park that changed the concept of what a national historical park could be. For a time in the 1800s, Lowell was Massachusetts’s cosmopolitan, must-see second city. The city’s industrial model was as high-tech then as Silicon Valley is today. It drew the attention of luminaries like Charles Dickens, Congressmen Davy Crockett and Abraham Lincoln, feminist sociologist Harriet Martineau, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. This insider’s account of the creative, bold community-driven process to establish the park explains why today Lowell National Historical Park is renowned as “the partnership park.” The park’s establishment was an integral piece of an urban revival strategy that has made Lowell the subject of scores of newspaper articles, magazine profiles, TV and radio reports, scholarly papers, and book chapters. Historic Preservation magazine has hailed the park as “the premier rehabilitation model for gritty cities worldwide.” The Lowell story has much to teach the mid-sized cities of the nation and the world. Mill Power frames the Lowell comeback in its historical context and brings together the people who dreamed, wrote, designed, pushed, and cheered a new national park into existence along with those who came after with the charges of shaping the ideas into material form. The volume features 100 photos, many of them showing the before-and-after story of this revitalization.

Read more less

Life Lessons from Literature is a must for all bibliophiles, providing a concise and highly accessible bucket list of must-read books that teaches us so many fundamental truths and broadens our minds.‘I read a book one day and my whole life was changed’ ... So confesses the narrator of Orhan Pamuk’s novel The New Life. But what can we learn from reading books? Life Lessons from Literature poses this broad question by examining the works of some of the greatest writers in history.In it, we can draw wisdom from Charles Dickens’ views on poverty and wealth; seek comfort from ideas about love from Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. Yet books are about much more than just romance and money. Through careful examination of over one hundred classic works of world literature, life lessons are also drawn from themes such as conflict and oppression, identity and psychology, showing how literature enriches and informs our understanding of ourselves and the wider world around us.From Brazil to Japan, the Americas to Africa; from Victor Hugo to Mark Twain and Chinua Achebe to Haruki Murakami, you will find literature from around the world in this gem of a book, in which the plots may differ but the themes and the lessons they have to teach us are entirely universal.

Read more less