Vizetelly, writing under the pseudonym J. Tyrwhitt Brooks, recalls an expedition to California he took between 1847-1848 . Originally, he planned to enlist as a surgeon for the US Army during the Mexican war, but conflicts had ended by the time he applied. In a quick change of plans, he joined a group of prospectors on their way to the newly found gold fields of California. While he might not find service in the military, his training as a physician made him a valuable addition to the ragtag team of explorers...

A look at some of the famous women in European history. Includes biographies on Cleopatra; Isabella of Castile; Joan of Arc; Maria Theresa; Josephine; Elizabeth of England; Mary of Scotland; Catherine of Russia; Marie Antoinette; and Madame Roland. Mr. Jenkins, whose name remains on the title-page of this volume, was prevented from finishing the work for a long time by sickness, and finally by death. The first chapter is from his pen, and the rest has been written according to his instructions by one whom he selected, and who has had access to works rare in this country, such as Monstrelet's Chronicles, Tooke's Life of Catherine II...

Lysistrata read by the Classics Drama Company at DePaul. The Classics Drama Company at DePaul is a new gathering of Thespians and Classicists dedicated to performing and understanding ancient literature. If you live in Chicago and attend DePaul University, we welcome new additions to our group. Contact Dr. Kirk Shellko (kshellko@depaul.edu), if interested.First performed in classical Athens c. 411 B.C.E., Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is the original battle of the sexes. One woman, Lysistrata, brings together the women of all Greece, exhorting them to withhold sexual contact from all men in order that they negotiate a treaty...

"This comical children's tale about the funny adventures of a funny pig written by an unknown author. The publisher has hired authors to write children's tales, and gave them "house names". The "name" of the author who wrote this tale is Richard Barnum. It became very successful, the most well known of Richard Barnum's tales. So, if you want to laugh a little, even if you are not a child, read this book".

Watkin Tench was an officer of the British Marines in the First Fleet to settle NSW. This is an interesting and entertaining account of his experiences during that time (Introduction by Tabithat)

The Chemical History of a Candle is a series of 6 lectures on chemistry presented to a juvenile audience in 1848. Taught by Michael Faraday - a chemist and physist, and regarded as the best experimentalist in the history of science - it is probably the most famous of the Christmas Lectures of the Royal Society. Taking the everyday burning of a candle as a starting point, Faraday spans the arc from combustion and its products, via the components of water and air (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon), back to the type of combustion that happens in the human body when we breathe...

A sketch of the second regiment of Connecticut volunteer heavy artillery, originally the Nineteenth Volunteer Infantry, in the Civil War.

Have you seen a human fairy? Meet Alice Morrow, the dainty fairy of the snows, who will dance her way right into your heart! Get ready to laugh and cry as you follow the antics and trials of the Morrow family, living in early 20th Century Cincinnati. (Introduction by Anne Elizabeth)

Tom Playfair; Or Making a Start is a book by a Roman Catholic priest, originally published in 1890, and written for youth ages 9-12.The story opens with 10-year-old Tom Playfair being quite a handful for his well-meaning but soft-hearted aunt. (Tom's mother has died.) Mr. Playfair decides to ship his son off to St. Maure's boarding school — an all-boys academy run by Jesuits — to shape him up, as well as to help him make a good preparation for his upcoming First Communion. Tom is less than enthusiastic, but his adventures are just about to begin: life at St. Maure's will not be dull.

The Damnation of Theron Ware (published in England as Illumination) is an 1896 novel by American author Harold Frederic. It is widely considered a classic of American realism. The novel reveals a great deal about turn-of-the-century provincial America, religious life, and the depressed state of intellectual and artistic culture in small towns.The novel centers on the life of a Methodist pastor named Theron Ware who has recently moved to a fictional small town in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, which Frederic modeled after Utica, New York...

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission was given the task of conducting a comprehensive legal and factual study on the social and economic implications of gambling in the United States. This report presents the principal findings of that work and recommendations for action.

This is the tale of a perilous voyage aboard a clipper ship told by the second mate. He looks up to Trunnell, the first mate, who somehow manages to hold things together between a murdering former captain, a captain who may not actually be a captain, and a crew inclined to mutiny. This all leads to a surprising and satisfying ending. The author, Hains, wrote frequently of the sea. He is the author who (under a pen name) had a story on the newsstands about a liner hitting an iceberg and sinking, while Titanic was doing precisely that!

Constitución vigente en España actualmente, fruto de la Transición a la democracia tras la muerte de Francisco Franco. (Introducción por AGV)

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's 1877 novel is set in a New England college town, and focuses on Avis Dobell, a professor's daughter. Avis is a talented painter, and bucks against the constraints placed on women in the 19th century. She wants to pursue a career as an artist and rejects marriage and motherhood, until she meets the charismatic young professor Philip Ostrander. Phelps's novel is a beautifully-written examination of the conflicts between marriage and career for women that is still relevant today.

Percy Keese Fitzhugh (September 7, 1876 - July 5, 1950) was an American author of nearly 100 books for children and young adults. The bulk of his work revolves around the fictional town of Bridgeboro, New Jersey and has a scouting theme. One of his major characters was Pee-Wee Harris. The title, Pee-Wee Harris, was the first in a series of 13 Pee-Wee Harris books. Pee Wee is just that; small in stature but huge in heart and ever so loyal as a scout should be. In the first installment, Pee-Wee visits his Aunt Jamsiah and Uncle Eb in a small New Jersey backwoods village called Everdoze...

Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.(br />His successes may have made him the first "show business" millionaire. Although Barnum was also an author, publisher, philanthropist, and for some time a politician, he said of himself, "I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me," and his personal aims were "to put money in his own coffers". (Reference: Wikipedia.org)

Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821 – 1890) was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.Burton's best-known achievements include traveling in disguise to Mecca, The Book of One Thousand Nights and A Night, an...

This is a collection of stories of authors who have lost their fortunes and sometimes their lives after writing a book. The liberty of a person's conscience was unknown in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; Why should a man be drawn and quartered for writing what we know is the truth? What must it have been like to have lived in that era. At the time it was dangerous to say that the earth went around the sun and many other theories were treated in the same way.

Although the origin of this book is much debated it remains, perhaps, one of the earliest recorded histories of Britain. It was believed that Nennius wrote the book around 796AD. If indeed he wrote this record, Nennius is recognised as being a teller, and embellisher, of historic characters and events.This book remains notable however, as one of the earliest that mention Arthur (The King of Arthurian legend).

Donald Alexander Mackenzie was a Scottish journalist and prolific writer on religion, mythology and anthropology in the early 20th century. His works included Indian Myth and Legend, Celtic Folklore and Myths of China and Japan.As well as writing books, articles and poems, he often gave lectures, and also broadcast talks on Celtic mythology.This volume deals with the myths and legends of Babylonia and Assyria, and as these reflect the civilization in which they developed, a historical narrative has been provided, beginning with the early Sumerian Age and concluding with the periods of the Persian and Grecian Empires...

This volume describes, in verse, the mythical creatures and people of ancient Scotland. It also includes explanatory notes about about the characters and folk tales that inspired the author's poetry. (Introduction by Matthew Reece)

Selma Lagerlöf was born in Vaermland, Sweden, in 1858 and enjoyed a long and very successful career as a writer, receiving the Nobel-Prize in Literature in 1909. She died in Vaermland in 1940. The Treasure (Herr Arnes penningar) is a fairly short Novel, both a Drama and a Ghost Story. Published in 1904 and the English translation in 1923. The story is set in Bohuslaen on the West coast of Sweden in the middle of the 16th Century. Herr Arne, the old Parson in Solberga and all his household are brutally murdered, and his great Treasure stolen...

The Ingoldsby Legends are a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poetry supposedly written by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of Richard Harris Barham.The legends were first printed in 1837 as a regular series in Bentley's Miscellany and later in New Monthly Magazine. The legends were illustrated by John Leech and George Cruikshank. They proved immensely popular and were compiled into books published in 1840, 1842 and 1847 by Richard Bentley. They remained popular through the Victorian era but have since fallen out of fame. An omnibus edition appeared in 1879: The Ingoldsby Legends; or Mirth and marvels.

Few stories of shipwreck and survival can equal that of the 16th century Spaniard Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who, cast ashore near present day (USA) Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1528, survived eight years of hand-to-mouth existence among the Indians of the South and Southwest, and who walked on foot across the plains to the Pacific Coast, arriving in Mexico in 1536. In 1542 he published an account of his adventures, and the present reading is based on Fanny Bandelier’s English translation of that text...

In 1770, Baron D'Holbach published his masterpiece, "Systeme de la Nature", which for a long time passed as the posthumous work of M. de Mirabaud. That text-book of "Atheistical Philosophy" caused a great sensation, and two years later, 1772, the Baron published this excellent abridgment of it, freed from arbitrary ideas; and by its clearness of expression, facility, and precision of style, rendered it most suitable for the average student. This text is based on an undated English translation of "Le Bon Sens" published c. 1900. The name of the translator was not stated.

Idylls of the King, published between 1856 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him, and the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom. The whole work recounts Arthur's attempt and failure to lift up mankind and create a perfect kingdom, from his coming to power to his death at the hands of the traitor Mordred. Individual poems detail the deeds of various knights, including Lancelot, Geraint, Galahad, and Balin and Balan, and also Merlin and the Lady of the Lake.

The Princess is a serio-comic blank verse narrative poem, written by Alfred Tennyson, published in 1847. The poem tells the story of an heroic princess who forswears the world of men and founds a women's university where men are forbidden to enter. The prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy enters the university with two friends, disguised as women students. They are discovered and flee, but eventually they fight a battle for the princess's hand.

The Story of the Pony Express offers an in depth account behind the need for a mail route to connect the eastern U.S. with the rapidly populating west coast following the gold rush of California, the springing up of lumber camps, and all incidental needs arising from the settling of the western frontier. Here we learn of the inception of the Pony Express, its formation, successes, failures, facts, statistics, combined with many anecdotes and names of the people who were an integral part of this incredible entity which lasted but less than two years, yet was instrumental in the successful settlement of two thirds of the land mass comprising the expanding country...

He was a painter, a poet, a novelist. He lived during the Hungarian revolution and his love of freedom meant his life was often in peril. She was his first love, this girl with the eyes like the sea. She was at heart noble, good and loving. What an excellent lady might have been made out of this woman, if she had only met with a husband who, in the most ordinary acceptance of the word, had been a good fellow, as is really the case with about nine men out of every ten. But she always managed to draw the unlucky tenth out of the urn of destiny...

Móric Jókay de Ásva, known as Mór Jókai or Maurus Jokai, was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist. He was a very prolific writer from an early age and wrote hundreds of novels, novellas, and short stories in his lifetime. The nine stories in this selection tell about hard times in Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary (Jokai was involved in the Hungarian uprising of 1848), as well as of ancient superstitions and folk lore. In the novella "The City of the Beast", Jokai gives his version of the sinking of Atlantis.

Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), a Scotsman by birth and a barrel-maker by trade, settled in Chicago in its infancy and founded the Pinkertons, the world's first detective agency. Though events associated with the agency after his death have tarnished the name, Pinkerton himself was one of the original human rights advocates. He was a dear friend to John Brown, an advisor to Abraham Lincoln, and 80 years ahead of his time in hiring female detectives. He was also stubborn, irascible, and an egomaniac...

This novel, which Shakespeare adapted in his pastoral comedy As You Like It, is the archetypal pastoral adventure. Two young persons of high birth, who have recently lost their fathers (one to death, one to banishment), fall in love but are separated almost at once and forced to flee to the Forest of Arden. There they meet again, but as Rosalynde is disguised for safety as a boy, named Ganymede, her lover Rosader does not recognize her. Once Rosader has confided his love to Ganymede, they play a game in which the "boy" poses as Rosalynde to give Rosader practice in wooing...