"Virginia Woolf's Orlando, 'the longest and most charming love letter in literature,' playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning thee centuries of boisterous, fantastic adventure, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces experiences with first love as England, under James I, lies locked...

When Jerome K Jerome and his friend decide to attend the Oberammergau Passion Play, an Easter pageant that is performed in Oberlin, Germany once every decade, they turn the trip into a vacation. From London to Germany, the pair plan a cross-continent trip, excited to sight-see and experience different cultures. However, the friends run into conflict before they even take off, unsure what to pack. While they sort through contradicting advice from others,...

THIS lyrical drama was written about twenty-five years ago. It is based on the following story from the Mahabharata. In the course of his wanderings, in fulfilment of a vow of penance, Arjuna came to Manipur. There he saw Chitrangada, the beautiful daughter of Chitravahana, the king of the country. Smitten with her charms, he asked the king for the hand of his daughter in marriage. Chitravahana asked him who he was, and learning that he was Arjuna...

Upton Sinclair's The Book of Life is a contains well founded advice and consists of two parts. The first part, Book of the Mind, covers spiritual topics such as faith, morality, and the subconscious. With intense conversations on the definition of each as well as their relationship and codependence on each other, Sinclair answers tough life questions and provides many thought-provoking ideas. While the first part of Sinclair's work concerns the intangibles...

While vacationing at a spa, a sculptor, who's unhappily married, encounters a former model whose love he rejected in favor of a more successful career. As the pair reconnects, they gradually rekindle their relationship, leading them down a dark and dangerous path. Arnold Rubek is a famous and wealthy sculptor who feels trapped in a mundane marriage. He and his wife Maia are visiting a spa, when he stumbles across a former model named Irena. She's...

Limbo (1920) is a collection of short fiction by English author Aldous Huxley. Mostly satirical, Huxley's novella, play, and four short stories show a promising writer at the very beginning of his career. In the novella "The Farcical History of Richard Greenow," Huxley satirizes the lives of his friends and acquaintances at Eton and Oxford. Richard Greenow, a young writer, spends his days as a politically engaged academic. At night, however, he writes...

The Georgics (29 BC) is a poem by Roman poet Virgil. Although less prominent than The Aeneid, Virgil's legendary epic of the Trojan hero Aeneas and his discovery of what would later become the city of Rome, The Georgics have endured as a landmark in the history of poetry. The Georgics were inspired by Lucretius's De Rerum Natura and Hesiod's Works and Days, an Ancient Greek poem describing the creation of the cosmos, the history of Earth, and the...

Considered an early feminist classic, Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes; Or The Loving Huntsman is a fantastical comedy about a middle-aged witch and her search for peace that was selected as the first ever Book of the Month upon publication in 1926. "When her father died, Laura Willowes went to live in London with her elder brother and his family…[she] was a gentle creature, and the little girls loved her; she would soon fit into her new...

First Published in 1920, "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil" is the first of three autobiographical works by W. E. B. Du Bois, the American sociologist, educator, author, historian, and civil rights activist. Presented as a collection of essays, poems, and spiritual songs, "Darkwater" is part personal memoir and part social commentary and criticism. Du Bois was deeply spiritual and relied heavily on his Christian beliefs throughout his life....

Gerald Arbuthnot receives a promotion from Lord Illingworth, a worldly politician who has a sordid history of women, one of whom is Gerald's widowed mother. When their connection is revealed, the young man questions his past, present and future aspirations. A Woman of No Importance opens with a high-class party featuring a group of society's most illustrious citizens. In the midst of the event, Gerald Arbuthnot enters and announces his new position...