Genre Other. Page - 308
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Omar Khayyám was a medieval Iranian mathematician, philosopher, scholar, and poet. He was thought to have composed over 1,000 rubáiyát, or quatrains, in his lifetime. Many different scholars have translated selections of Khayyám’s quatrains, but Edward FitzGerald’s translation remains the most beloved.
FitzGerald’s translation is interesting in that it isn’t a literal translation—rather, FitzGerald took significant artistic license in his interpretation. Thus it’s tough to say if we should call this a translation of the Rubáiyát, or poems by FitzGerald based on or inspired by Khayyám’s quatrains.
Whatever we call it, this translation is a bright and lyrical celebration of the joys and beauties of everyday life. FitzGerald’s work has remained popular for hundreds of years precisely because of its uplifting and wondrous quality.
This ebook is based on the fifth edition, which is very similar to the fourth edition, the last edition to be published in FitzGerald’s lifetime. The fifth edition was published posthumously based on FitzGerald’s notes.
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North of Boston is Robert Frost’s second collection of poetry. It includes some of his more famous poems, like “Mending Wall,” “Home Burial,” and “After Apple-Picking.”
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Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and his friend and contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A hugely influential work, Lyrical Ballads is generally acknowledged to have started the Romantic movement in English literature—a period marked by a departure from the stiff and unapproachable poetry of earlier times, and by a focus on readable, relatable verse written in everyday language. Many of Wordsworth’s poems focus on the natural world and the down-to-earth people of the country, another far departure from the rational and dry literature of old. Romanticism was one of the largest sea changes in modern English literature, and Lyrical Ballads was its catalyst.
This ebook edition is based on the 1805 edition of Lyrical Ballads, and features the famous poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Tintern Abbey,” “Expostulation and Reply,” “Lucy Gray,” and many others.
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White Fang is Jack London’s companion novel to The Call of the Wild. In The Call of the Wild we follow a dog’s journey from domestication to wilderness, but in White Fang we see the opposite: a wild wolf-dog captured by men and eventually domesticated.
White Fang’s journey isn’t an easy one; both the wild and civilization have their share of brutal violence. But he eventually seems happy in a home with a loving family. When read side-by-side with The Call of the Wild, White Fang poses an interesting question: is wilderness really an improvement over civilization? Is there one right way to live?
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One of the most famous ghost stories in literature, The Turn of the Screw earned its place in the annals of influential English novellas not for its qualities as a gothic ghost story, but rather for the many complex and subtle ways the reader can come to opposing conclusions as to tale’s very nature. Are the ghosts the governess sees real, or are they figments of her quiet insanity?
The Turn of the Screw was originally published as a serial, and later went through many revisions by James himself. Though there aren’t any overt suggestion that James intended his novella to be anything but a simple ghost story, the ambiguity in the narrative has captured the imagination of generations of readers and critics.
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In A Princess of Mars, John Carter is transported to a Mars inhabited by strange civilizations and embarks on various adventures on his quest home. Often held up as a seminal example of pulp science fiction, A Princess of Mars is the first entry in Burroughs’ epic Martian series, and the first to feature the character of John Carter.
Though often categorized as just a pulp adventure tale, A Princess of Mars was hugely influential on many budding science fiction writers, professional scientists, and explorers of the day. The novel remains a light, fast-paced, and enjoyable read, and continues to inspire adaptations nearly a hundred years after its publication.
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Jules Verne’s most-acclaimed novel remains a cultural cornerstone to this day. The story of Phileas Fogg’s spectacular journey by then-novel technologies is a fast-paced, colorful, and thoroughly enjoyable portrait of the British empire at the height of its power.
Originally published as a serial so believable that readers at the time placed bets on whether Fogg would succeed or not, Verne’s adventure epic continues to inspire travelers and adventurers to this day.
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Beyond Good and Evil, one of Nietzsche’s four “late period” works, is a philosophical treatise organized into nine parts and 296 short individual sections. In it he explores the concept of morality as taken for granted by contemporary philosophers, and whether “good” and “evil” should be considered just two sides of the same coin.
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W. W. Jacobs was a prolific writer of short stories. His topics were typically humorous and nautical in nature, but they weren’t exclusively so. This anthology includes some of his most famous short stories, including “The Monkey’s Paw,” a story of the supernatural in which a monkey’s hand grants three wishes to its owner, but at huge cost.
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The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde’s most popular play today, enduring thanks to its easy humor, witty dialog, and clever satire. It was also one of his more successful plays, despite its first run being prematurely ended after only 86 performances. The main characters pretend to be other people in order to escape social obligations, with the resulting confusion of identities driving the plot and the humor behind it.
Earnest also holds the sad distinction of being Wilde’s last published play. A feud with an aristocrat whose son was Wilde’s lover led to a court case revealing Wilde as a homosexual—a crime in those days, and punishable by imprisonment with hard labor.