Showing results by narrator "Frederick Davidson" in All Categories

Balzac’s universally loved novel explores the great theme of money and its effect on the human character. Old Goriot is a lodger at Madame Vauquer’s Parisian boarding house. At first, his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are reduced, he is gradually shunned. He moves into smaller and less desirable rooms in the house, and soon his only remaining visitors are two beautiful young women. The mystery as to who they are and what is happening to Goriot’s fortune involves several other boarders, including Rastignac, an ambitious youth who hopes to rise in society.

Just as Anne had to use a male pseudonym in order to publish, Helen Graham, the novel's protagonist and a battered wife, must assume an alias in order to gain freedom from her suffering. With her young child, Helen takes up residence at Wildfell Hall, shrouding her past in secrecy, yet earning the attentions of a young, unmarried country gentlemen.

The year 1866 was marked by a unique incident, a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon, and rumors agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind, especially seafaring men. Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and the governments of several states on the two continents, were deeply interested in the matter.

This is the story of an artist who was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of art. In much of its general outline, this famous novel follows the life of Paul Gauguin, famous French post-impressionist painter, but it is not a novelized biography of Gauguin. Rather it is a sharply-delineated, carefully wrought "private life", written by one of the most vivid and penetrating contemporary literary masters.

A Room with a View portrays the love of a British woman for an expatriate living in Italy, a country which to Forster represents the forces of true passion. Caught up in a world of social snobbery, Forster's heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, finds herself constrained by the claustrophobic influence of her British guardians, who encourage her to take up with a well-connected boor.

Darwin's theory of evolution is accepted by most educated Americans as simple fact. This easy acceptance, however, hides from us the many ways in which evolution - as an idea - shapes our thinking about many things. What if this idea is wrong? What if "evolution" is just a word that covers up scientific ignorance of how the wonders of the world could have been created? Law professor Phillip Johnson looks at the evidence for Darwinistic evolution the way a lawyer would - with a cold dispassionate eye.

During the reign of Richard I, Wilfred of Ivanhoe earns his father's disapproval by falling in love with Rowena, his father's ward. His father had planned to wed her himself, and reestablish the Saxon line.

One of the most distinctive periods in English poetry was the age of Romanticism, a movement which rebelled against the neoclassical forms and celebrated the imagination as a spiritual force

Pretty, impecunious Sally Nicholas never dreamed a fortune could prove a disadvantage, until she became an heiress and watched in bewilderment as her orderly existence went haywire. Coping first with her brother's wild theatrical ambitions, then with the defection of her fiancé and his immediate replacement by a much more appropriate but strangely unattractive suitor, Sally finds that life in New York is becoming altogether too complicated, and a trip to England only makes the whole situation worse.

G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown is perhaps the most lovable amateur detective ever created. This short, shabby priest with his cherubic, round face attracts situations that baffle everyone - except Father Brown and his rather naïve wisdom. The twelve enthralling stories in this book take Father Brown from London to Cornwall, from Italy to France, as he gets involved with bandits, treason, murder, curses, and an American crime-detection machine.

Written in 1912 as a light-hearted reaction against the solemnity of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Trent's Last Case, with its ingeniously twisting plot and cheerfully self-mocking hero, is the first classic of the golden age of English detective fiction.

Andrew Lang drew upon his classical learning to recreate the Greek myths for children. He follows Ulysses from his boyhood, thorugh the Trojan Wars, to his voyage to seek the son of Achilles. The story of Helen of Troy, and the Trojan Horse, is told with the pace of a modern adventure. Lang's collection of retold myths includes Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece, and recounts the lives and heroic deeds of two other major figures: Theseus, who slew the Minotaur; and Perseus, who freed the princess Andromeda as one of his many tests, with the helo of the gorgon's head. Perseus, Andromeda, and her parents, Cephus and Cassiopeia, are remembered in the constellations of the summer sky. Not only will theres tales bring to life for children of all ages the quest for good and the struggle against eveil embodied in the myths, they also reveal the roots of characters referenced throughout Western litereature from Shakespeare's time to the present day. In the true spirit of adventure, Lang dedicated his book to H. Rider Haggard.

Three young truants from a church meeting on Sunday make their way to a seashore hideaway, where they observe a huge black man muttering incantations and performing weird rites. When the man discovers the children, he chases them with a knife. In defense, Davy Crawfurd flings a rock at him, and they narrowly escape. Years later, young David Crawfurd goes to South Africa to make his fortune and is caught in the very heart of a great native uprising. Under strange circumstances, he comes face-to-face with its leader, only to recognize the strange blazing eyes of the black man he had encountered as a child on the beach.

A father and three of his seven children work brutal hours in a mine, facing hazards such as landslides, fire, and poisoned air, to scrape together enough money for food. When their lodger, Étienne, shares ideas about a workers' revolt, the family gradually embraces his plans. Soon the settlement is aflame with resolve to strike for better wages and working conditions. Savage and horrifying events ensue as miners clash with management and with each other.

Robert Browning's intensely romantic love affair with Elizabeth Barrett inspired some of literature's most celebrated verse. His view that love is the key to the meaning of life and life's animating force is evident in these collected poems.

Perhaps more than any other book The Thirty-Nine Steps has set the pattern for the story of the chase for a wanted man. And, of the many writers who have attempted this kind of thing since Buchan, only a very few, like Graham Greene, have managed to sustain the tension in the same way. The story's extended chase scene inspired Alfred Hitchcock's movie of the same name.

The Professor, the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed, is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator she created, the work questions many of the presuppositions of Victorian society.

This terse and startling novel is the story of a struggle for possession and of its devastating consequences. Three women seek to secure the affections of one man, while he, in turn, tries to satisfy them all. But in the middle of this contest of wills stands his unwitting and vulnerable young daughter. The conclusion of The Other House makes it one of the most disturbing and memorable of Henry James' depictions of the uncontrollable passions that lie beneath the polished veneer of civilized life.

This monumental work made the Arthurian cycle available for the first time in English. Malory took a body of legends from Celtic folklore that had been adapted into French literature, gave them an English perspective, and produced a work which ever since has had tremendous influence upon literature.

Whether viewed as subjugator or protector, Oliver Cromwell was a titan of 17th century England. French theologian Merle D'Aubigné wrote this 1847 biography for one purpose: "rectification of the common opinion with regard to Cromwell's religious character." And rectify he does.