Search results for ""author victoria"

Togo Heihachiro (1848-1934) was born into a feudal society that had lived in seclusion for 250 years. As a teenage samurai, he witnessed the destruction wrought upon his native land by British warships. As the legendary Silent Admiral, he was at the forefront of innovations in warfare, pioneering the Japanese use of modern gunnery and wireless communication. He is best known as the Nelson of the East for his resounding victory over the Tsar's navy in the Russo-Japanese War, but he also lived a remarkable life studying at a British maritime college, witnessing the Sino-French War, the Hawaiian Revolution, and the Boxer Uprising. After his retirement, he was appointed to oversee the education of the Emperor, Hirohito. This new biography spans Japan's sudden, violent leap out of its self-imposed isolation and into the 20th century. Delving beyond Togo's finest hour at the Battle of Tsushima, it portrays the life of a diffident Japanese sailor in Victorian Britain, his reluctant celebrity in America where he was laid low by Boston cooking and welcomed by his biggest fan, Theodore Roosevelt , forgotten wars over the short-lived Republics of Ezo and Formosa, and the accumulation of peacetime experience that forged a wartime hero.

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’Gorgeous, an utter delight’ MARIAN KEYES ‘A charming debut that sparks with fun and fizz’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING ’A must read!’ SOPHIE IRWIN ’Storytelling at its finest’ STYLIST A DAILY MAIL ‘novel to devour in 2023 Mrs Wood is London’s most celebrated medium. She’s managed to survive decades in the competitive world of contacting the Other Side, has avoided the dreaded slips that revealed others as frauds and is still hosting packed-out séances for Victorian high society. Yet, some of her patrons have recently cancelled their appointments. There are reports of American mediums nearly materialising full spirits and audiences are no longer satisfied with the knocking on tables and candle theatrics of years gone by. And then, at one of Mrs Wood’s routine gatherings, she hears something terrifying – faint, but unmistakable: a yawn. Mrs Wood needs to spice up her brand. She decides to take on Emmie, a young protégé, to join her show. But is Emmie Finch the naïve ingenue she seems to be? Or does she pose more of a threat to Mrs Wood’s reign and, more horrifyingly, her reputation than Mrs Wood could ever have imagined?

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The story of Jack, the intrepid little boy whose courage and ingenuity defeated a host of many-headed giants several times his size, is an English folk-tale that must have been told often in the Victorian nursery of the Doyle family. Growing up in the 1830s, they were all gifted children, especially Richard, whose natural talent for draughtsmanship was matched by imaginative invention and a passion for legend and the grotesque. In 1842, when only eighteen, he created for his own delight a picture-book version of Jack The Giant Killer, writing the text by hand, and carefully placing on each page a water-colour illustration within a pictorial border. The new everyman edition has typeset the text for greater legibility and redesigned the book for contemporary appeal, while retaining Doyle's vivid and characterful illustrations, enlarged and enhanced by modern colour printing techniques. The result is a book that will satisfy the modern child's appetite for bloodthirsty exploits of wonder and magic, yet is at the same time a true collector's item for anyone interested in the history of children's book illustration.

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St Mary’s is a vibrant London church on the northern edge of Primrose Hill. It is widely known for its fine liturgy and music in the Anglican tradition, its affirmation of women’s ministry, and its pioneering youthwork and social outreach. It was designed by MP Manning and built by Dove Bros of Islington in two stages (1872 and 1892). This book celebrates the church’s 150th anniversary. It draws on previously untapped archives to chart the history of the building and its worshipping community. The book is split into two parts: 1872-1951 ranges from the church’s origins in the Boys’ Home in Regent’s Park Road to the period of recovery after the Second World War. It is rich in stories: among them St Mary’s part in the Ritualist controversies of the Victorian church; the near collapse of the building through railway tunnelling in the 1870s; the striking innovations of Percy Dearmer (vicar 1901-1915); and the desperate years of the Blitz in the 1940s. 1952-2022 draws also on the personal memories of today’s congregation, exploring how St Mary’s has become the beacon of hope it is today, and taking stock of its particular place in Christian witness, now and for the future.

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In North Pole, Michael Bravo explains how visions of the North Pole have been supremely important to the world's cultures and political leaders, from Alexander the Great to neo-Hindu nationalists. Tracing poles and polarity back to sacred ancient civilizations, this book explores how the idea of a North Pole has given rise to utopias, satires, fantasies, paradoxes and nationalist ideologies, from the Renaissance to the Third Reich. The Victorian conceit of the polar regions as a vast empty wilderness, and the preserve of white males battling against the elements, was far from the only polar vision. Michael Bravo shows an alternative set of pictures, of a habitable Arctic criss-crossed by densely connected networks of Inuit routes, rich and dense in cultural meanings. In Western and Eastern cultures, theories of a sacred North Pole abound. Visions of paradise and a lost Eden have mingled freely with the imperial visions of Europe and the United States. Forebodings of failure and catastrophe have been companions to tales of conquest and redemption. Michael Bravo shows that visions of a sacred or living pole can help humanity understand its twenty-first-century predicament, but only by understanding the pole's deeper history.

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_____________________Welcome to the Winter Garden. Open only at 13 o'clock.You are invited to enter an unusual competition.I am looking for the most magical, spectacular, remarkable pleasure garden this world has to offer.On the night her mother dies, 8-year-old Beatrice receives an invitation to the mysterious Winter Garden. A place of wonder and magic, filled with all manner of strange and spectacular flora and fauna, the garden is her solace every night for seven days. But when the garden disappears, and no one believes her story, Beatrice is left to wonder if it were truly real.Eighteen years later, on the eve of her wedding to a man her late father approved of but she does not love, Beatrice makes the decision to throw off the expectations of Victorian English society and search for the garden. But when both she and her closest friend, Rosa, receive invitations to compete to create spectacular pleasure gardens - with the prize being one wish from the last of the Winter Garden's magic - she realises she may be closer to finding it than she ever imagined.Now all she has to do is win.

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Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross and his wife Lizzie return in Ann Granger's gripping ninth Victorian mystery.It is the summer of 1871 when Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross pays a visit to Jacob Jacobus, the old rogue of Limehouse: infamous antiquarian, friend to villains and informer to the police. Ben hopes to glean information about any burglaries that might take place now that the wealthiest echelons of society are back in London for the Season. Little does he realise that an audacious theft has already occurred - a priceless family heirloom, the Roxby emerald necklace, has been stolen from a dressing table in the Roxby residence, and the widowed Mrs Roxby is demanding its immediate return. Ben's day gets worse when he and his wife Lizzie are interrupted that evening by the news that Jacob Jacobus has been found dead in his room with his throat slit from ear to ear ... Surely the two crimes cannot be connected? But with Ben's meticulous investigative skills and Lizzie's relentless curiosity, it is only a matter of time before the tragic truth is revealed . . .

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Dense fog masks foul play in the streets of London, as Ann Granger brings us her seventh Victorian mystery featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross and his wife Lizzie.It is March 1870. London is in the grip of fog and ice. But Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross has more than the weather to worry about when the body of a young woman is found in a dustbin at the back of a Piccadilly restaurant.Ben must establish who the victim is before he can find out how and why she came to be there. His enquiries lead him first to a bootmaker in Salisbury and then to a landowner in Yorkshire. Meanwhile, Ben's wife, Lizzie, aided by their eagle-eyed maid, Bessie, is investigating the mystery of a girl who is apparently being kept a prisoner in her own home.As Ben pursues an increasingly complex case, Lizzie reveals a vital piece of evidence that brings him one step closer to solving the crime...Praise for Ann Granger's crime novels:'Characterisation, as ever with Granger, is sharp and astringent' The Times'Her usual impeccable plotting is fully in place' Good Book Guide'A clever and lively book' Margaret Yorke'This engrossing story looks like the start of a highly enjoyable series' Scotsman

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Algorithms are the hidden methods that computers apply to process information and make decisions. Nowadays, our lives are run by algorithms. They determine what news we see. They influence which products we buy. They suggest our dating partners. They may even be determining the outcome of national elections. They are creating, and destroying, entire industries. Despite mounting concerns, few know what algorithms are, how they work, or who created them. Poems that Solve Puzzles tells the story of algorithms from their ancient origins to the present day and beyond. The book introduces readers to the inventors and inspirational events behind the genesis of the world's most important algorithms. Professor Chris Bleakley recounts tales of ancient lost inscriptions, Victorian steam-driven contraptions, top secret military projects, penniless academics, hippy dreamers, tech billionaires, superhuman artificial intelligences, cryptocurrencies, and quantum computing. Along the way, the book explains, with the aid of clear examples and illustrations, how the most influential algorithms work. Compelling and impactful, Poems that Solve Puzzles tells the story of how algorithms came to revolutionise our world.

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'Did she know and if she knew would she speak?'The story of an unsolved literary mystery that explores what James referred to as "troubled artistic consciousness" Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.Henry James (1843-1916). James's works available in Penguin Classics are The Portrait of a Lady,The Europeans, What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age, The Figure in the Carpet and Other Stories, The Turn of The Screw, The Aspern Papers and Other Tales, The Wings of The Dove, Washington Square, The Tragic Muse, Daisy Miller, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl, Selected Tales, Roderick Hudson, The Princess Casamassima and The American.

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As a new expedition to Antarctica is planned a dark tale emerges of a previous, life-threatening adventure. Revealing hidden secrets, lost civilisations and alien origins, master storyteller H.P. Lovecraft indulges his talent for the macabre and horrific. In a gripping tale of fast-paced discovery an entire alien ecosystem is uncovered, and an ancient and bloody battle into which the adventurers have been drawn. It is only through sheer luck that two of them manage to escape, leaving the gnarled bodies of their companions, and live to tell the tale as a warning for all those who come after. FLAME TREE 451: From mystery to crime, supernatural to horror and fantasy to science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic. Each book features a brand new biography and glossary of Literary, Gothic and Victorian terms.

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If you want to see the whole of Wales, from cosmopolitan Cardiff in the south to the historic Victorian resorts of the north, there's one road that will take you all the way: the A470. This route, which traverses the country from end to end, winds its way through post-industrial valleys, agricultural landscapes and stunning mountains and it offers a chance to see Wales for what it is in the twenty-first century, in all its diversity.In the company of Gwendoline, his trusty but ancient scooter, travel writer Marc P. Jones follows the long unwinding road of the A470 on a quest to discover what makes his homeland tick. Taking in the splendour, beauty and history of the communities he travels through, Marc explores what unites and divides the different regions of this varied nation, and how can they learn to understand each other better. And one question, above all others, remains to be answered: will Gwendoline make it to the end of the road in one piece?

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Collecting antique paper lithographed toys is an exciting and visually rewarding hobby. These vividly printed toys remind us of a time gone by when games, blocks, toys, dollhouses, puzzles, and books were designed by a method called chromolithography--a process that is as close to artistic perfection as a nineteenth-century painting. Filled with over 500 full color photographs, this book provides a fascinating and informative glimpse into the late Victorian era of toy making. Organized by type of item, each chapter includes useful facts about the history, manufacturing, and typical illustrations found on the toys and books, while values, measurements, dates, and game pieces are all provided in the captions. In addition, readers will find a valuable listing of the most prominent American and European manufacturers of the time, including McLoughlin Bros., Milton Bradley, Bliss, W. & S. B. Ives, Raphael Tuck, E.P. Dutton, and more. Never before has one book provided such a colorful guide to paper litho toy collecting, so take a step back in time to when toy making was a rare art!

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In 1800, Bude would have been lucky to have a population of 100, but people flocked to the town for work when the canal opened. When the canal closed, Bude would have crumbled, but for the developing tourist trade. The canal totally changed the topography of Bude. Victorian engineers built the breakwater and altered the course of the river to scour out a makeshift harbour. Today the breakwater is used for fishing and by tourists for fabulous views to Summerleaze Beach and beyond. Bude has had its share of disasters. The River Neet flooded the Strand and The Crescent in 1903, the 1950s and 1993, and in 1891 there was a great blizzard. The Strand now looks very different to the 1860s when it was dominated by warehouses. As tourism developed, many old buildings such as the cinema disappeared. Modern Bude has evolved, with changes to place names and buildings, but it remains a beautiful town loved by locals and visitors alike.

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Wriggle your toes in the sand and feel the warm breeze on your face when you check into the hotel that’s full of dreams… ‘The happy plot is charming… very entertaining’ Publisher's Weekly Three years after ditching her career in New York City, Rosie never thought she’d still be managing the quaint faded Victorian hotel in her seaside hometown. What’s worse, the hotel’s new owners are turning it into a copy of their Florida properties. Flamingos and all. Cultures are clashing and the hotel’s residents stand in the way of the developers’ plans. The hotel is both their home and their family. That’s going to make Rory’s job difficult when he arrives to enforce the changes. And Rosie isn’t exactly on his side, even though it’s the chance to finally restart her career. Rory might be charming, but he’s still there to evict her friends. How can she follow her dreams if it means ending everyone else’s? Praise for Lilly Bartlett: “Absolutely gorgeous!” Debbie Johnson “Full of enjoyment, humour and utter brilliance” 5* Ali the Dragon Slayer “Funny, charming and irresistibly sweet. I loved every minute of this and raced through from first page to last” Jen Med’s Book Reviews “Wowzer, it’s phenomenal! Rosie is one of the best characters I’ve read this year” 10 out of 10 Paige Turner Reviews “Utterly fabulous, completely hilarious, a pure escapist read” 5* Rachel’s Random Reads “I was buzzing through the pages – a story I HIGHLY recommend!” Mrs Mommy Booknerd “Enchanting, huggable, gigglefest – the perfect antidote for when antics in the real world are severely tragic” The Writing Garnet “A brilliant cast of eccentric and very memorable characters” Cheryl’s M-M Reviews “A fun, fondant-sweet, dream of a plot but with a melancholic edge to tug at your heartstrings” My Chestnut Reading Tree “Witty dialogue, engaging and relatable characters – I flew through this story in record time” Books of All Kinds “A beautiful story – a perfect pick-me-up – such a lot of laugh-out-loud moments” BrizzleLass Books “Delightful friendships, witty writing and a sweet romance that is guaranteed to entertain” Rae Reads

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“As I drew near and nearer to the light, the chasm became wider, and at last I saw, to my unspeakable amaze, a broad level road at the bottom of the abyss, illumined as far as the eye could reach by what seemed artificial gas lamps placed at regular intervals, as in the thoroughfare of a great city; and I heard confusedly at a distance a hum as of human voices.…”Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race was one of the most remarkable and most influential books published in the 1870s. The protagonist, a wealthy American wanderer, accompanies an engineer into the recesses of a mine, and discovers the vast caverns of a well-lit, civilized land in which dwell the Vril-ya. Placid vegetarians and mystics, the Vril-ya are privy to the powerful force of Vril—a mysterious source of energy that may be used to illuminate, or to destroy. The Vril-ya have built a world without fame and without envy, without poverty and without many of the other extremes that characterize human society. The women are taller and grander than the men, and control everything related to the reproduction of the race. There is little need to work—and much of what does need to be done is for a novel reason consigned to children.As the Vril-ya have evolved a society of calm and of contentment, so they have evolved physically. But as it turns out, they are destined one day to emerge from the earth and to destroy human civilization.Bulwer-Lytton’s novel is fascinating for the ideas it expresses about evolution, about gender, and about the ambitions of human society. But it is also an extraordinarily entertaining science fiction novel. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, one of the great figures of late Victorian literature, may have been overvalued in his time—but his extraordinarily engaging and readable work is certainly greatly undervalued today. As Brian Aldiss notes in his introduction to this new edition, this utopian science fiction novel first published in 1871 still retains tremendous interest.

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From the sixteenth until the twentieth century, British power and influence gradually expanded to cover one quarter of the world's surface. The common saying was that the sun never sets on the British Empire . What began as a largely entrepreneurial enterprise in the early modern period, with privately run joint stock trading companies such as the East India Company driving British commercial expansion, by the nineteenth century had become, especially after 1857, a state-run endeavour, supported by a powerful military and navy. By the Victorian era, Britannia really did rule the waves. _Heroes of the British Empire_ is the story of how British Empire builders such as Robert Clive, General Gordon, and Lord Roberts of Kandahar were represented and idealised in popular culture. The men who built the empire were often portrayed as possessing certain unique abilities which enabled them to serve their country in often inhospitable territories, and spread what imperial ideologues saw as the benefits of the British Empire to supposedly uncivilised peoples in far flung corners of the world. These qualities and abilities were athleticism, a sense of fair play, devotion to God, and a fervent sense of duty and loyalty to the nation and the empire. Through the example of these heroes, people in Britain, and children in particular, were encouraged to sign up and serve the empire or, in the words of Henry Newbolt, Play up! Play up! And Play the Game! Yet this was not the whole story: while some writers were paid up imperial propagandists, other writers in England detested the very idea of the British Empire. And in the twentieth century, those who were once considered as heroic military men were condemned as racist rulers and exploitative empire builders.

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Finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Memoir/Biography A revelatory memoir about sex, oppression, and the universal struggle for justice.From his time as a child in 1960s India, Siddharth Dube knew that he was different. Reckoning with his femininity and sexuality—and his intellect—would send him on a lifelong journey of discovery: from Harvard classrooms to unsafe cruising sites; from ivory-tower think-tanks to shantytowns; from halls of power at the UN and World Bank to jail cells where sexual outcasts are brutalized. Coming of age in the earliest days of AIDS, Dube was at the frontlines when that disease made rights for gay men and for sex workers a matter of basic survival, pushing to decriminalize same-sex relations and sex work in India, both similarly outlawed under laws dating back to British colonial rule. He became a trenchant critic of the United States’ imposition of its cruel anti-prostitution policies on developing countries—an effort legitimized by leading American feminists and would-be do-gooders—warning that this was a 21st century replay of the moralistic Victorian-era campaigns that had spawned endless persecution of countless women, men, and trans individuals the world over. Profound, ferocious, and luminously written, An Indefinite Sentence is both a personal and political journey, weaving Dube’s own quest for love and self-respect with unforgettable portrayals of the struggles of some of the world’s most oppressed people, those reviled and cast out for their sexuality. Informed by a lifetime of scholarship and introspection, it is essential reading on the global debates over sexuality, gender expression, and of securing human rights and social justice in a world distorted by inequality and right-wing ascendancy.

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This volume brings together essential writings by the unjustly neglected nineteenth-century philosopher Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904). A prominent ethicist, feminist, champion of animal welfare, and critic of Darwinism and atheism, Cobbe was well known and highly regarded in the Victorian era. This collection of her work introduces contemporary readers to Cobbe and shows how her thought developed over time, beginning in 1855 with her Essay on Intuitive Morals, in which she set out her duty-based moral theory, arguing that morality and religion are indissolubly connected. This work provided the framework within which she addressed many theoretical and practical issues in her prolific publishing career. In the 1860s and early 1870s, she gave an account of human duties to animals; articulated a duty-based form of feminism; defended a unique type of dualism in the philosophy of mind; and argued against evolutionary ethics. Cobbe put her philosophical views into practice, campaigning for women's rights and for first the regulation and later the abolition of vivisection. In turn her political experiences led her to revise her ethical theory. From the 1870s onwards she increasingly emphasized the moral role of the emotions, especially sympathy, and she theorized a gradual historical progression in sympathy. Moving into the 1880s, Cobbe combatted secularism, agnosticism, and atheism, arguing that religion is necessary not only for morality but also for meaningful life and culture. Shedding light on Cobbe's philosophical perspective and its applications, this volume demonstrates the range, systematicity and philosophical character of her work and makes her core ethical theory and its central applications and developments available for teaching and scholarship.

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An ambitious comparative study of British and Latin American literature produced across a century of economic colonization.Winner of the Sonya Rudikoff Prize by the Northeast Victorian Studies AssociationSpanish colonization of Latin America came to an end in the early nineteenth century as, one by one, countries from Bolivia to Chile declared their independence. But soon another empire exerted control over the region through markets and trade dealings—Britain. Merchants, developers, and politicians seized on the opportunity to bring the newly independent nations under the sway of British financial power, subjecting them to an informal empire that lasted into the twentieth century. In The Forms of Informal Empire, Jessie Reeder reveals that this economic imperial control was founded on an audacious conceptual paradox: that Latin America should simultaneously be both free and unfree. As a result, two of the most important narrative tropes of empire—progress and family—grew strained under the contradictory logic of an informal empire. By reading a variety of texts in English and Spanish—including Simón Bolívar's letters and essays, poetry by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and novels by Anthony Trollope and Vicente Fidel López—Reeder challenges the conventional wisdom that informal empire was simply an extension of Britain's vast formal empire. In her compelling formalist account of the structures of imperial thought, informal empire emerges as a divergent, intractable concept throughout the nineteenth-century Atlantic world.The Forms of Informal Empire goes where previous studies of informal empire and the British nineteenth century have not, offering nuanced and often surprising close readings of British and Latin American texts in their original languages. Reeder's comparative approach provides a new vision of imperial power and makes a forceful case for expanding the archive of British literary studies.

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Many recent discussions of working-class culture in literary and cultural studies have tended to present an oversimplified view of resistance. In this groundbreaking work, Pamela Fox offers a far more complex theory of working-class identity, particularly as reflected in British novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through the concept of class shame, she produces a model of working-class subjectivity that understands resistance in a more accurate and useful way—as a complicated kind of refusal, directed at both dominated and dominant culture.With a focus on certain classics in the working-class literary "canon," such as The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and Love on the Dole, as well as lesser-known texts by working-class women, Fox uncovers the anxieties that underlie representations of class and consciousness. Shame repeatedly emerges as a powerful counterforce in these works, continually unsettling the surface narrative of protest to reveal an ambivalent relation toward the working-class identities the novels apparently champion. Class Fictions offers an equally rigorous analysis of cultural studies itself, which has historically sought to defend and value the radical difference of working-class culture. Fox also brings to her analysis a strong feminist perspective that devotes considerable attention to the often overlooked role of gender in working-class fiction. She demonstrates that working-class novels not only expose master narratives of middle-class culture that must be resisted, but that they also reveal to us a need to create counter narratives or formulas of working-class life. In doing so, this book provides a more subtle sense of the role of resistance in working class culture. While of interest to scholars of Victorian and working-class fiction, Pamela Fox’s argument has far-reaching implications for the way literary and cultural studies will be defined and practiced.

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Examining the ideas and attitudes that encourage scientists to experiment on living creatures, what their justifications are, and how these have changed over time.Experimentation on animals—particularly humans—is often assumed to be a uniquely modern phenomenon. But the ideas and attitudes that encourage biological and medical scientists to experiment on living creatures date from the earliest expressions of Western thought. In Experimenting with Humans and Animals, Anita Guerrini looks at the history of these practices and examines the philosophical and ethical arguments that justified them.Guerrini discusses key historical episodes in the use of living beings in science and medicine, including the discovery of blood circulation, the development of smallpox and polio vaccines, and recent research in genetics, ecology, and animal behavior. She also explores the rise of the antivivisection movement in Victorian England, the modern animal rights movement, and current debates over gene therapy and genetically engineered animals. We learn how perceptions and understandings of human and animal pain have changed; how ideas of class, race, and gender have defined the human research subject; and that the ethical values of science seldom stray far from the society in which scientists live and work.Thoroughly rewritten and updated, with new material in every chapter, the book emphasizes a broader understanding of experimentation and adds material on gene therapy, self-experimentation, and prisoners and slaves as experimental subjects. A new chapter brings the story up to the present while reflecting on the current regulatory scene, new developments in science, and emerging genomics. Experimenting with Humans and Animals offers readers a context within which to understand more fully the responsibility we all bear for the suffering inflicted on other living beings in the name of scientific knowledge.

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Dombey and Son (1846–48), Dickens’s seventh novel, stands at the mid-point of his career. It was begun in Switzerland after a break from near-continuous novel writing and bears the hallmarks of its long gestation and Dickens’s deepening engagement with the many cross-currents shaping Britain’s social, cultural and political life. Predominant among them are public debates about the need to provide schooling for young children, ethical questions prompted by the demolition of neighbourhoods to make way for railways, the discussion of sanitary reforms to improve the nation’s health, and divergent responses to prostitution and other crimes inextricably linked with poverty, illiteracy and deprivation. Drawing on contemporary documentation, Dickens’s letters, his journalism and the novelist’s own personal involvement with schemes to improve the lives of the poor, this Companion to Dombey and Son offers an authoritative and exhaustive study of the many contemporary contexts that inform Dickens’s panoramic examination of mid-Victorian life. Of equal importance and intimately connected with the novel’s engagement with public issues is the moral thread that binds the whole, a familial story about pride and the pursuit of riches. Private matters accordingly receive comparable attention as Dickens exposes some of the consequences of mid-century domestic ideology, examining the nursing of infants, the education of young children, and the pressure on both men and women to marry. In compelling scenes artfully interwoven, the story of the novel’s prosperous merchant unfolds, in language, as the annotations show, enriched from fairy tale, science and pseudo-science, archaeology, popular and classical literature, poetry, the Bible and voyages and travels. Dombey and Son also illuminates in its extended portrait of a Lear-like figure truths about loss and love central to Dickens’s fiction.

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The Moonstone is one of the first true works of detective fiction, in which Wilkie Collins established the groundwork for the genre itself. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Sandra Kemp.The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and the Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand. The intricate plot and modern technique of multiple narrators made Wilkie Collins's 1868 work a huge success in the Victorian sensation genre. With a reconstruction of the crime, red herrings and a 'locked-room' puzzle, The Moonstone was also a major precursor of the modern mystery novel.In her introduction Sandra Kemp explores The Moonstone's the detective elements of Collins's writing, and reveals how Collins's sensibilities were untypical of his era.Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) was born in London in 1824, the eldest son of the landscape painter William Collins. In 1846 he was entered to read for the bar at Lincoln's Inn, where he gained the knowledge that was to give him much of the material for his writing. From the early 1850s he was a friend of Charles Dickens, who produced and acted in two melodramas written by Collins, The Lighthouse and The Frozen Deep. Of his novels, Collins is best remembered for The Woman in White (1859), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and The Moonstone (1868).If you enjoyed The Moonstone you might like Collins's The Woman in White, also available in Penguin Classics.'Probably the very finest detective story ever written'Dorothy L. Sayers'The first, the longest and the best of modern modern English detective novels'T.S. Eliot

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The first novel in Anthony Trollope's 'Palliser' series, Can You Forgive Her? traces the fortunes of three very different women in an exploration of whether social obligations and personal happiness can ever coincide. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction by Stephen Wall.Alice Vavasor cannot decide whether to marry her ambitious but violent cousin George or the upright and gentlemanly John Grey - and finds herself accepting and rejecting each of them in turn. Increasingly confused about her own feelings and unable to forgive herself for such vacillation, her situation is contrasted with that of her friend Lady Glencora - forced to marry the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser in order to prevent the worthless Burgo Fitzgerald from wasting her vast fortune. In asking his readers to pardon Alice for her transgression of the Victorian moral code, Trollope created a telling and wide-ranging account of the social world of his day.In his introduction, Stephen Wall examines Trollope's skill in depicting the strengths and weaknesses of his characters, their behaviour and inner lives. This edition also includes notes and a bibliography.Anthony Trollope (1815-82) had an unhappy childhood characterised by a stark contrast between his family's high social standing and their comparative poverty. He wrote his earliest novels while working as a Post Office inspector, but did not meet with success until the publication of the first of his 'Barsetshire novels', The Warden (1855). As well as writing over forty novels, including such popular works as Can You Forgive Her? (1865), Phineas Finn (1869), He Knew He Was Right (1869) and The Way We Live Now (1875) Trollope is credited with introducing the postbox to England.If you enjoyed Can You Forgive Her?, you might enjoy Henry James's The Ambassadors, also available in Penguin Classics.

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The great vogue in Victorian times for matters Arthurian owes much to the poetry of Matthew Arnold and William Morris. Unlike Tennyson, however, neither of these poets is now remembered primarily for his Arthurian poems; as a result there is no modern anthology devoted to this area of their output. This is a major gap which the present volume seeks to rectify. Arnold's Tristram and Iseultis the first modern English retelling of the Tristram legend,a melancholy interpretation of the theme, reflecting the poet's pessimism about his own age; Morris's different approach - the rich sensuality of his The Defence of Guenevere and other poems -clearly reveals the allure thatthe middle ages held for the pre-Raphaelites.

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Once our ancient ancestors discovered that by settling and cultivating grains they would have a regular and plentiful food source, it was only a matter of time before beer became a part of everyday life. And that beer was mainly made by women. For centuries, women brewers remained key participants in our beer trade, up to the Industrial Revolution when increased mechanisation, alongside Victorian societal constraints, conspired to push a lot of them out. From then on, commercial brewing was generally considered a male-led profession. But things are changing. With the increase in new breweries, and a growing enthusiasm for beer, women are back at the helm at an ever-growing number of British brewers, large and small, reasserting their dominance in the industry.

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'A comic masterpiece' Patrick Gale, GuardianPillar of society and stern upholder of Victorian values, god-fearing Norfolk merchant John Barnard presides over a large and largely unhappy family. This is their story - his brandy-swilling wife, their hapless offspring and their changing fortunes - over the decades. Sylvia Townsend Warner's last novel, The Flint Anchor gloriously overturns our ideas of history, family and storytelling itself.'A novel created with solidity and subtlety of feeling, a fusion of warmth, wit and quietly biting shrewdness that are reminiscent of Jane Austen' Atlantic Review'As a sustained work of historical imagination, it has few rivals ... one of the most acute and intelligent writers of her age' Claire Harman

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Warm-Hearted Victorian Romance Brings 1880s London to Life When a series of circumstances beyond her control leave Rosalyn Bernay alone and penniless in London, she chances upon a job backstage at a theater that is presenting the most popular show in London. A talented musician and singer, she feels immediately at home and soon becomes enthralled with the idea of pursuing a career on the stage. A hand injury during a skirmish in India has forced Nate Moran out of the army until he recovers. Filling his time at a stable of horses for hire in London, he has also spent the past two months working nights as a stagehand, filling in for his injured brother. Although he's glad he can help his family through a tough time, he is counting the days until he can rejoin his regiment. London holds bitter memories for him that he is anxious to escape. But then he meets the beautiful woman who has found a new lease on life in the very place Nate can't wait to leave behind.

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A psychological horror that will grip you from the first page, and haunt you long after you’ve finished the last. Nobody believes Lindy when she says she doesn’t pull her hair out on purpose. Nobody believes Lindy when she says she hears voices in the night. Nobody believes Lindy when she says her dead ancestors are haunting her dreams. Nobody believes Lindy … After the death of her father, Lindy falls headlong into a state of grief and no longer understands her place in the world. Through paranormal rituals, Ouija boards and spiritualist churches, Lindy attempts to speak to her father beyond the grave – but to no avail. That is until she receives a ‘visit’ from Esme, her Victorian ancestor, who reveals that her family is under a curse that separates them in the afterlife. Determined to break it, Lindy sacrifices her grip on reality. Not everyone wants her to succeed and there are secrets that fight to remain buried alongside the dead that she seeks . . .

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When Rona and Craig buy a large Victorian house up from Edinburgh’s Newhaven district – once teeming with fishing boats – they plan to renovate and set it up as a luxury care home. But something is not quite right: disturbing sounds can be heard when the sea mists swirl; their unpredictable neighbour makes it clear that the house was not always a happy family home. And their ‘characterful’ historic pile has a gloomy cellar harbouring relics from days gone by. Back in the 1890s, superstitious fishwives blame young Jessie for the deaths of their menfolk in a terrible storm, and she’s forced into the Newhaven Poorhouse. In those less enlightened times, life was often severe, cruel even, and Jessie is entirely at the mercy of a tyrant matron. But one inmate is not all she seems. Jessie begins to pick at the truth, uncovering the secrets and lies that pervade the poorhouse – and which will have profound and dangerous consequences in the future.

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On 8 October 1833 Coroner Thomas Higgs opened an inquest into the death of John Bickerton, an elderly eccentric who, despite rumours of his wealth and high connections, had died in abject squalor, from the want of the common necessaries of life'.Over the coming hours, Higgs and his jury would unpick the details of Bickerton's strange, sad story: a story that began with comparative wealth, including education at Oxford and the Inns of Court, and brought him to the attention of two sitting prime ministers, but which descended into madness, imprisonment, mockery and starvation.Using Bickerton as a narrative thread to weave the story around, historian Stephen Haddelsey explores the lives of the down-and-outs and out-of-favours of Georgian and early Victorian England, tracking the deprivations society's lost children faced. For any fan of the era of balls and intrigue, here is revealed the story of Society's rejects and those whose star was only ever doomed to fall.

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Victorian England in the 1870s and the early years of the FA Cup. Pitches are little better than mud baths. Crossbars and referees' whistles don't exist, while the players all charge around in a rough-and-tumble manner more suited to rugby. But one side dares to be different. Combining silky skills with military muscle, they pass the ball in a spectacular new style of play. And they have a team spirit like no other. They are a 'band of brothers' who fight for Queen and Country - and for each other. They are the Royal Engineers from Chatham in Kent and Foot Soldiers is their extraordinary story. Among their ranks are 'Renny', one of the game's first superstars, and 'The Major', the mastermind behind their astonishing rise. In a four-year quest to land football's greatest prize both men must confront a disastrous fire, monstrous bad luck, the elements at their fiercest and the shocking death of one of the team's favourite players on FA Cup Final day itself.

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Duncan Ferguson. David Moyes. Paul McCartney. A father and a son. A passion for Everton, and a passion for The Beatles. Blues & Beatles is a story of football and music across the generations, showing in touching and hilarious detail how a young boy inherited his father's obsessions - and would one day pass them on to his own sons. A journalist like his father, Neil Roberts has special access to his beloved football club, so his heartfelt memoir includes glimpses within the inner sanctum of Goodison Park as well as every unforgettable Everton moment since the 1980s, all soundtracked by the Fab Four. Along the way, Neil meets his heroes - including musical as well as Everton icons - and reveals intriguing connections to Dixie Dean and a famous Victorian footballer. But above all, Blues & Beatles is a story of football and music shared by father and son. Described by Everton fans' website Blue Kipper as "a fantastic read [which] covers every Everton 'moment' from the 70's to date carefully captured in detail."

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Have you ever watched wagon after wagon of a goods train thunder past and wondered where it is heading, what it is carrying, and how it works its way between the passenger services? While goods services now tend to be shrouded in anonymity, in past times they were celebrated, prominently advertised, and in many cases were the raisons d’être for a rail route. Throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, goods trains were the lifeblood of the nation, transporting precious raw materials, construction and industrial items, and fresh produce from coastal areas and farms into the centres of bustling cities. This informative illustrated history shows how rail freight has been carried since Victorian times, and how systems have been organized, from the train itself to the sidings, railway clearing houses, goods sheds and final destinations – whether villages, towns, cities, factories or docks. It also examines the basic rolling stock of these trains, from the humble coal wagon to today’s hi-tech containers.

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An irreverent book of morbid curiosities that leaves no headstone unturnedThis isn't your average walk through the graveyard. Filled with facts that will tickle your gray matter, You'll Leave This World with Your Butt Sewn Shut provides answers to all the questions about death that you've ever wanted to ask (and more than a few you never thought to). You'll learn how to avoid incendiary pacemakers and exploding caskets, why Victorians ate mummies and Napoleon artfully arranged skulls, and what morticians do to give you a rosy glow without blood flow.- Is your hamster, cat, or dog most likely to be first in line at the dead-body buffet? The answer may surprise you!- Why did people start booby-trapping graves after the Civil War? Hint: It's not vampire related.- What's your best shot at becoming a tree after you die? If you said cremation, you may want to sit down for Chapter 5.But have no fearthis no-holds-barred account of the end that a

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500 PIECE PUZZLE – The Spooky Portraits 500 Piece Foil Puzzle by Galison features a wall of spooky portraits enhanced with gold foil details. This puzzle is just the right level of challenge for the whole family to join in on for hours of puzzling fun! The box includes an insert with the full puzzle image for reference. BRIGHT AND BOLD ARTWORK – This puzzle features a Victorian inspired wall adorned with the spooky frames of infamous monsters' ghouls and other supernatural beings. Puzzle lovers will appreciate all the creepy details as they piece together the puzzle, creating a haunted display that will add a touch of spookiness to any room this fall season. PERFECT FOR GIFTING – Whether you're looking for a fun activity for a rainy day or a unique gift for a loved one, this puzzle is sure to impress! With its intricate details and challenging design, this puzzle is perfect for anyone who loves the haunted and the restless spirits

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'Richly evocative and glittering with atmosphere, this tale of ambition and identity had me gripped from start to finish' STACEY HALLS _________________________________Crowds gather at Crillick's Variety Theatre, where curiosity is satisfied with displays of intrigue and fear. They're here for the star of the show - the Great Amazonia warrior. They needn't know this warrior is in fact Zillah, a mixed-race actress from the East End fooling them each night with her thrilling performance. But something is amiss, and when Crillick's new act goes missing Zillah feels compelled to investigate, knowing the fates that can befall women in Victorian London. From the bustle of the West India Docks to the coffee houses of Fleet Street to the parlours of Mayfair, Zillah's journey for answers will find her caught between both sides of her own identity, and between two men: her wealthy white admirer, and an African merchant appalled by her act. Will Zillah be forced to confront the price of her o

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Death descends on the New Forest in Ann Granger's gripping eighth Victorian mystery featuring Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross and his wife Lizzie.It is Spring 1871 when Lizzie Ross accompanies her formidable Aunt Parry on a restorative trip to the south coast. Lizzie's husband, Ben, is kept busy at Scotland Yard and urges his wife to stay out of harm's way. But when Lizzie and her aunt are invited to dine with other guests at the home of wealthy landowner Sir Henry Meager, and he is found shot dead in his bed the next morning, no one feels safe.On Lizzie's last visit to the New Forest, another gruesome murder took place, and the superstitious locals now see her as a bad omen. But Lizzie suspects that Sir Henry had a number of bitter enemies, many of whom might have wanted him dead. And once Ben arrives to help with the investigation, he and Lizzie must work together to expose Sir Henry's darkest secrets and a ruthless killer intent on revenge...

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This book traces the intimate connections between Britain and China throughout the nineteenth century and argues for China's central impact on the British visual imagination. Chang brings together an unusual group of primary sources to investigate how nineteenth-century Britons looked at and represented Chinese people, places, and things, and how, in the process, ethnographic, geographic, and aesthetic representations of China shaped British writers' and artists' vision of their own lives and experiences. For many Britons, China was much more than a geographical location; it was also a way of seeing and being seen that could be either embraced as creative inspiration or rejected as contagious influence. In both cases, the idea of China's visual difference stood in negative contrast to Britain's evolving sense of the visual and literary real. To better grasp what Romantic and Victorian writers, artists, and architects were doing at home, we must also understand the foreign "objects" found in their midst and what they were looking at abroad.

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It is said, and not without some justification, that a picture is worth a thousand words. As it happens Southwold, very nearly England's most easterly town, is endlessly written about. Its charm, grace and pure magic have captivated writers and journalists ever since Daniel Defoe visited in 1713. But this book tells the story of Southwold over the last 100 years in pictures. The photographers seized opportunities presented by the late Victorian and early Edwardian era - whcih also proved to be the golden age of the postcard - to capture Southwold on their glass plate negatives, and also on film. It is all here: the beach, the common, the sea, the town, the people, the wars and the special Southwold occasions. And of course there are some lovely pictures of the eccentric little railway that helped turn a town that lived mainly by fishing into a genteel holiday resort. This book will delight all those who love Southwold and understand its funny ways.

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'Top Bins! A personal best, a lap record and a hole in one for when rain has stopped play.' ALAN DAVIESHop, skip and jump into this wonderfully curious grand tour of the world of sports, brought to you by QI Elves James Harkin and Anna Ptaszynski.From sport's weirdest rules to its most unlikely heroes, via comically large cricket bats, pole-vaulting priests, creative football chants and exploding billiard balls, each chapter of Everything to Play For is brimming with surprising facts and intriguing stories.Even if you've never asked yourself what David Attenborough has to do with yellow tennis balls, why Victorian doctors feared the outbreak of 'bicycle face' or what led ancient Egyptian athletes to have their spleens removed, this book will give you the astonishing answers - and plenty more besides.**For more from the team behind QI's hit TV show, check out the QI FACTS series of books, @qikipedia, their weekly podcast at nosuchthingasafish.com or visit qi.com.

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Norfolk Summer presents the story about the making of a film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates Joseph Losey's award-winning movie The Go-Between was filmed entirely on location in Norfolk in 1970. The film charts the tragic story of a young boy's loss of innocence during a hot summer and stars Julie Christie and Alan Bates as a pair of lovers crossing class boundaries in late Victorian England. The production brought together the playwright Harold Pinter, who adapted L.P. Hartley's elegant novel for the screen, the acclaimed director Joseph Losey and a cast of international stars for ten weeks' filming in and around Melton Constable Hall in north Norfolk - a time of happy creativity, some tension and a good deal of comedy. But the idyllic summer only came about after years of bitter battling over the rights of the book, and it was to be followed by yet more intrigue and high drama, which culminated in the film's triumph at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the prestigious Palme d'Or.

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Change is coming, but are the people of Camptounfoot ready for it? For generations, the oldest village in Scotland has remained little changed but now it is 1853 and the railway is coming to Camptounfoot.Shy and beautiful Emma Jane Wylie is determined to fight for the realisation of her father’s dream – the construction of the railway bridge that will carry the new track southwards. Her father’s demise puts Emma in charge. But during the two years of its construction, the project is beset by drama and tragedy: cholera rages, the men down tools, murder and conspiracy are in the air – and then a landslide threatens to destroy all their endeavours. Inspired by her father’s vision, and with a strength of mind and resolve at odds with her Victorian upbringing, Emma Jane takes on the world – and is determined to win. The first book in the A Bridge In Time series, this dramatic and riveting saga of survival is perfect for fans of Anna Jacobs and Tessa Barclay.

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"As I stand at my kitchen sink and look across at what we optimistically call our herb garden, to one side I see an old wooden sign on which are carved the words 'Arthur's Garden'. Arthur doesn't live here. My wonderful great-uncle died nearly thirty years ago having spent most of his long life in the Victorian terraced house in which his mother had brought up eleven children. The sign had stood in the garden there for decades, a gift to the man who'd always cherished that small patch of Kent, creating a riot of glorious colour which lit up the row of long, narrow strips that tumbled down to a line of back gates from which you could look across the lane to the local coal yard below." In Arthur's Garden, Pam Rhodes collates a heart-warming collection of songs and poems, advice and tit bits about the glorious, very ordinary, English garden - told through the life of her Uncle Arthur. This is a gardening book, with a story.

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'He was not blind to the fact that murder, like the religions of the Pagan world, requires a victim as well as a priest...'Wilde's supremely witty tale of dandies, anarchists and a murderous prophecy in London high society.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). Wilde's works available in Penguin Classics are De Profundis and Other Prison Writings, The Complete Short Fiction, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose.

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The Penguin English Library Edition of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop ... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth ... stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

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On a warm summer day, playing at the seashore, Natalie makes a sand lady, dressing her in seashells, Cape May diamonds, and sea grass. When Natalie accidentally adds a magical egret feather as decoration, her sand lady springs to life! So begins an exciting adventure in time, taking Natalie and her sand lady back to Cape May, New Jersey, in 1912! Entertaining and educational for readers of all ages, this story also features a Cape Island map, more than twenty watercolor illustrations of Victorian architecture and landmarks, a glossary, and a timeline. This book is a must for all young people who have visited this beloved shore resort, and for the young-at-heart who hope to spread the joy. Written by a professional educator and textbook writer, it is also an excellent instructional book for the classroom. Additionally, an integrated extension activities guide is available for the classroom. Middle grades–ages 8-12.

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