Following the Equator (American English title) or More Tramps Abroad (English title) is a non-fiction travelogue published by American author Mark Twain in 1897. Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to a failed investment into a “revolutionary” typesetting machine. In an attempt to extricate himself from debt of $100,000 (equivalent of about $2 million in 2005) he undertook a tour of the British Empire in 1895, a route chosen to provide numerous opportunities for lectures in the English language...

A historical manuscript penned by a medieval Norse poet. A mysterious code. Three intrepid explorers. A subterranean world filled with prehistoric creatures and proto-humans. These are some of the brilliant ideas that are superbly blended in A Journey to the Interior of the Earth by Jules Verne. Jules Verne, the French writer who created several works of science fiction, adventure stories and very popular novels, wrote A Journey to the Interior of the Earth in 1864. Some of his other books explore different aspects of geography, space and time travel...

The famous writer of great adventure stories Jules Verne wrote also several lesser known, but good non-fiction works. "Celebrated travels and travellers" tells the story of geographical discovery in the same well written and precise manner we are used to finding in Verne’s fiction books. This book is divided into 3 volumes. This is the first volume, named the "Exploration of the World" and it covers the period in the World's history of exploration from B.C. 505 to the close of the 17th century. The second and third volumes are respectively entitled "The great navigators of the 18th century" and "The great navigators of the 19th century".Coordinated by Kristine Bekere and Kajo.

H.G. Wells had so much fun playing with his children on the floor of their playroom, he decided to write a jovial little book to inspire other parents in their pursuit of quality time with the kids. While the raw materials available from hobby stores of his day were woefully short of the variety and quality of what can be bought easily now, he and his sons created their own worlds to rule. This short work describes two games of imagination played out upon the floor of his home – an archipelago of islands, and a thoroughly integrated city, conveniently organized with two mayoral positions for his sons “G...

This is the first book in the Pellucidar series. Pellucidar is a fictional Hollow Earth milieu invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. The stories initially involve the adventures of mining heir David Innes and his inventor friend Abner Perry after they use an “iron mole” to burrow 500 miles into the earth’s crust. (adapted from Wikipedia)

Published in 1920, Thuvia, Maid of Mars is the fourth book in the Barsoom series and concentrates on Carthoris, the son of infamous John Carter, and Thuvia, the princess of Ptarth, as they find themselves entangled in a complex web of love and strict traditions of Barsoom. A typical Burroughs piece, the installment contains all the required elements of an effective pulp fiction, including a hero, a damsel in distress, unforeseen complications, and a generous supply of action. Welcoming a new...

Pellucidar is a fictional “Hollow Earth” milieu invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. The stories initially involve the adventures of mining heir David Innes and his inventor friend Abner Perry after they use an “iron mole” to burrow 500 miles into the earth’s crust. This is the second book in the series.

This novel, first published in 1890, follows the life of Dick Heldar, a painter. Most of the novel is set in London, but many important events throughout the story occur in Sudan or India. It was made into a 1916 film with Jose Collins and a 1939 film by Paramount starring Ronald Colman.

This is volume 20 ofThe Chronicles of Canada series. This volume describes the explorers who braved the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage, focusing on Samuel Hearne, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and Sir John Franklin.

The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the “major phase” of James’ career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on the consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail but also with powerful insight.

The Real Thing is, on one level, a somewhat ironic tale of an artist and two rather particular models. Yet it also raises questions about the relationship between the notion of reality in our humdrum world, and the means that an artist must use in trying to achieve, or reflect, that reality. Though the protagonist is an artist and illustrator of books, not a writer, it's not hard to imagine that James has himself, and other writers, in mind.

The Marble Faun is Hawthorne's most unusual romance. Writing on the eve of the American Civil War, Hawthorne set his story in a fantastical Italy. The romance mixes elements of a fable, pastoral, gothic novel, and travel guide. In the spring of 1858, Hawthorne was inspired to write his romance when he saw the Faun of Praxiteles in a Roman sculpture gallery. The theme, characteristic of Hawthorne, is guilt and the Fall of Man. The four main characters are Miriam, a beautiful painter who is compared...

Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White tells the story of two half-sisters, Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe who were embroiled in the sinister plot of Sir Percival Glyde and Count Fosco to take over their family’s wealth. It’s considered to be one of the first “sensation novels” to be published. Like most novels that fall into this category, the protagonists here are pushed to their limits by the villains before they finally got the justice they deserved. The story begins with Walter Hartright helping a woman dressed in white who turned out to have escaped from a mental asylum...

This is the second of two travelogues published by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958). Both deal with Glacier National Park, and this book also deals with the Cascade Mountains (The other is entitled Through Glacier Park). Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues and articles, though she is most famous for her mystery stories. The region that became Glacier National Park was first inhabited by Native Americans and upon the arrival of European explorers, was dominated by the Blackfeet in the east and the Flathead in the western regions.

Edison’s Conquest of Mars, by Garrett P. Serviss, is one of the many science fiction novels published in the nineteenth century. Although science fiction was not at the time thought of as a distinct literary genre, it was a very popular literary form, with almost every fiction magazine regularly publishing science fiction stories and novels. “Edison’s Conquest of Mars” was published in 1898 as an unauthorized sequel to H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, but did not achieve the fame of its predecessor. The book was endorsed by Thomas Edison, the hero of the book — though not by Wells.

"This 1922 book by poet and sometime cultural critic Vachel Lindsay might have been the first to treat the then-new medium of moving pictures as an art form, one that was potentially as rich, complex, mysterious as far older ones, and whose physical and aesthetic properties were only starting to be understood. The highlight of the book might be “The Motion Picture of Fairy Splendor,” which examines the relationship between film storytelling, magic, myths, legends and bedtime stories. It’s discombobulating, in a good way, to read Lindsay’s attempts to grapple with what, precisely, cinema is...

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of four crime novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound.

An Elizabethan era historical novel by Scotland’s master of fiction, Sir Walter Scott. With a cast of historical and created characters, including the Queen herself, Scott presents the sad history and tragic consequences of the secretive marriage of young Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester. (Summary by SK)

This sequel to Bangs' A House-Boat on the Styx continues the "thought-experiment" of bringing various historical and fictional figures together, detailing the adventures of the ladies of Hades after they are kidnapped by pirates and the attempts of the Associated Shades (led by Sherlock Holmes) to retrieve their house-boat. (Introduction by Emma Joyce)

Raffles Holmes is introduced in these stories as the son of the great Sherlock Holmes. He is also revealed to be the grandson of A.J. Raffles, a gentleman thief pursued by Sherlock Holmes many years earlier. This apparently contradictory family background sets the stage for his colorful and amusing adventures.

The first half of this book describes the devastating earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1906, and the subsequent destruction caused by fire. Various eyewitnesses and victims give their account on the tragedy. In the second half, a number of different other earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are retold, like the eruption of the Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeij or the explosion of the Krakatoa, together with scientific explanations for the causes of earthquakes and the eruption of volcanos.

This is a charming book on Art History for children (and everyone else). Each chapter focuses on a great painting, reproduced in color in the original text. The authors explain the story behind the paintings, as well as the life, times, and techniques of the artists.

“A complete exposé of the modus operandi of fire eaters, heat resisters, poison eaters, venomous reptile defiers, sword swallowers, human ostriches, strong men, etc.”, [by Harry Houdini, from the subtitle].

The Book of Tea was written by Okakura Kakuzo in the early 20th century. It was first published in 1906, and has since been republished many times. – In the book, Kakuzo introduces the term Teaism and how Tea has affected nearly every aspect of Japanese culture, thought, and life. The book is noted to be accessibile to Western audiences because though Kakuzo was born and raised Japanese, he was trained from a young age to speak English; and would speak it all his life, becoming proficient at communicating his thoughts in the Western Mind...

A series of lectures on landscape painting delivered at Oxford in 1871, by artist, critic, and social commentator, John Ruskin.

"The Two Paths" is a collection of five lectures delivered in 1858 and 1859 by John Ruskin on art and architecture. This is how the author himself presents the book: "The following addresses, though spoken at different times, are intentionally connected in subject; their aim being to set one or two main principles of art in simple light before the general student, and to indicate their practical bearing on modern design. The law which it has been my effort chiefly to illustrate is the dependence of all noble design, in any kind, on the sculpture or painting of Organic Form." The most famous of these, the fifth lecture, is commonly known simply as "The Work of Iron"

The Stones of Venice is a three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture by English art historian John Ruskin, first published from 1851 to 1853. Intending to prove how the architecture in Venice exemplified the principles he discussed in his earlier work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin examined the city in detail, describing for example over eighty churches. He discusses architecture of Venice's Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance periods, and provides a general history of the city as well...

William Dean Howells is at his iconoclastic best in this exploration of bourgeois values, particularly in the clash between respectable society and the dubious bohemian world of Art and Poetry. Cornelia Saunders has everything going for her in her middle-class world: comfort, good looks, attentive young men. She seems willing to risk it all for the sake of what might be an artistic Gift, venturing with great trepidation to put her foot over the line into Bohemia to see if it might be the thing for her. Skewering the conventions of sentimental literature as usual, Howells keeps the reader guessing to the end as to the fate of Cornelia and her Gift.

No matter how enlightened, chances are you’ve been raised around superstitious lore of one kind or another. Fanny Dickerson Bergen was one of the original researchers of North American oral traditions relating to such key life events and experiences as babyhood and childhood, marriage, wishes and dreams, luck, warts and cures, death omens and mortuary customs, and “such truck,” as Huck Finn would say. You’ll be surprised at how many of these old saws you’ll know. Here’s a quote from...

In contrast to Scott’s South Pole expedition, Amundsen’s expedition benefited from good equipment, appropriate clothing, and a fundamentally different primary task (Amundsen did no surveying on his route south and is known to have taken only two photographs) Amundsen had a better understanding of dogs and their handling, and he used of skis more effectively. He pioneered an entirely new route to the Pole and they returned. In Amundsen’s own words: “Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it...

Stories of King Arthur and His Knights. Retold from Malory’s “Morte dArthur”.

Cellini’s autobiographical memoirs, which he began writing in Florence in 1558, give a detailed account of his singular career, as well as his loves, hatreds, passions, and delights, written in an energetic, direct, and racy style. They show a great self-regard and self-assertion, sometimes running into extravagances which are impossible to credit. He even writes in a complacent way of how he contemplated his murders before carrying them out. He writes of his time in Paris: Parts of his tale recount...

A children's version of the Lives of Artists by Vassari with many Illustrations. Of course we won't be able to show the paintings but the descriptions and the anecdotes are interesting and may lead a child to further interest.

This is a 1st hand account written by a survivor of the Titanic about that fateful night and the events leading up to it as well as the events that followed its sinking.

Piracy embodies the romance of the sea at its highest expression. It is a sad but inevitable commentary on our civilization, that, so far as the sea is concerned, it has developed from its infancy down to a century or so ago, under one phase or another of piracy. If men were savages on land they were doubly so at sea, and all the years of maritime adventure–years that added to the map of the world till there was little left to discover–could not wholly eradicate the piratical germ.

This autobiographical work describes the author’s harrowing experience caught on a small drifting piece of ice, while crossing a frozen bay by dog team on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland.

Tales of the brave and daring explorers that ventured into the unknown “Sea of Darkness” where it was thought monsters and angry gods lived. They dared to sail near the equator which was thought to have such intense heat that it would boil the ocean water. It was also commonly thought at the time that the world was flat, and the ships would fall off the face of the earth. These men overcame these fears to explore and discover new lands.

This book is intended to give the reader an account of the origin and history of Hallowe’en, how it absorbed some customs belonging to other days in the year,—such as May Day, Midsummer, and Christmas. The context is illustrated by selections from ancient and modern poetry and prose, related to Hallowe’en ideas.

A Collection of Australian Aboriginal Legendary Folk-Lore Tales, legends of the Narran tribe, known among themselves as Noongahburrahs.

A collection of Arthurian tales retold for children.

“It is quite generally recognized that psychology has remained in the semi-mythological, semi-scholastic period longer than most attempts at scientific formulization. For a long time it has been the “spook science” per se, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real, though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity sui generis, as a...

A non-fiction work, comparing and collecting ghost stories by Classical Greek and Republican or Imperial Roman authors.

The author, who fought as a private in the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, describes the Confederate soldier’s daily struggles with hunger, illness, fear, and the perils of combat; as well as his pride of service, love of comrades, and courage in the face of overwhelming odds

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His name is one of the most recognizable names in history and one of the most enduring of composers. At age 5, this “wunderkinder” took to the stage and began his life as a prolific and celebrated creator-genius of such luminous works the world has not known since. This collection of morsels taken from his personal letters is engaging and gives a look into the mind of the boy wonder. Was he mad? Was he miraculous?

new AI description

Mrs. Mee, her husband, and her sister ran a yarn and needlework import/warehouse business in Bath, England. Her books primarily contain practical everyday items that knit up quickly with the busy homemaker in mind. At this time, published knitting “receipts” did not contain abbreviations and were laborious to use. They were, however, rich in error! Later in her career, due to circumstances of war and the resulting social stress and poverty, many of her knitting books were printed for ladies’ charitable societies, which used her knitting “receipts” to clothe the poor mill workers who were out of work due to the American Civil War and the embargo of cotton.

This work tells the history of smoking in England from the social point of view. Thus it does not deal with the history of tobacco growing or tobacco related manufacture, but is rather the story of how smoking has fitted in with the fashions and customs throughout the ages, and the changes in the attitude of society towards smoking.

The King of Ireland's Son is a children's novel published in Ireland in 1916 written by Padraic Colum, and illustrated by Willy Pogany. It is the story of the eldest of the King of Ireland's sons, and his adventures winning and then finding Fedelma, the Enchanter's Daughter, who after being won is kidnapped from him by the King of the Land of Mist. It is solidly based in Irish folklore, itself being originally a folktale. (Introduction by Wikipedia)