A Venetian adventurer, author, and lifelong womanizer, the name of Casanova has become interchangeable with the art of seduction since the 18th century. In his most notable book, «Story of My Life,» Casanova narrates countless tales of the people with whom he interacted: lovers, European royalty, clergymen, and artists such as Goethe, Voltaire, and Mozart. His writing demonstrates his talent for dialogue, while his life seems an inadvertent test ...
Mary Antin was born in 1881 to a Jewish family in Polotsk, in what was then czarist Russia. Had her family not immigrated to the Boston area in 1894, Mary would have grown up uneducated, married an Orthodox Jewish man, raised children and never become assimilated into society. Thanks to the American public school system, Antin became large Americanized, learning the English language and American customs. By eighteen, she had published her first ...
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was born into little means. His difficult youth and early academic failure stacked the cards against him. Yet he became one of the 19th century's most revered and influential novelists, helping, along with Dickens and Thackeray, to define an era of Victorian literature. During his prolific career as an author, he penned over forty novels. The «Barsetshire» and «Palliser» series defined his career, establishing h ...
Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) was a founder of the famed Bloomsbury Group, an influential group of intellectuals and writers in wartime England. Considered a masterpiece of biographical writing, «Eminent Victorians» examines the lives of four important figures representative of the Victorian era. This 1918 work is noted for its irreverent sense of realism toward generally heroized individuals. «Eminent Victorians» looks at the Catholic leader Card ...
This work contains two separate biographical accounts of Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, the man considered to be the father of Europe. One account was penned by the French, medieval biographer, Einhard, who in 791 joined the royal court to serve as an epic poet, grammarian, mathematician and architect, and ultimately a confidante to the King. Einhard's work is believed to be the most accurate portrayal of Charlemagne, and perhaps more i ...
Considered the first American «bestseller», this early captivity narrative follows Mary Rowlandson's three month holding by the American Algonquian Indians. The first by an Anglo-American woman, Mrs. Rowlandson's «Narrative» remains a classic. Captivating to readers since its initial publication in 1682, this account presents a unique perspective on transcultural interaction between early American settlers and their Native American cou ...
"Twelve Years A Slave" is the story of Solomon Northup, an African American who was born free in New York in the early 1800s. In 1841, Solomon Northup was captured and forced into slavery for a period of 12 years. «Twelve Years A Slave» is a captivating narrative of the life of freedom and slavery experienced by one African American man prior to the American Civil War. The book is detailed in its account of life on a cotton and sugar planta ...
Marie Antoinette was the wife of Louis XVI of France, the reigning King at the time of the French Revolution. Louis XVI's failure in running the country along with Marie Antoinette's unpopularity were central elements that led to the political climate at the end of the 19th century in France and ultimately would seal their own tragic demise and the end of the monarchy. Hilaire Belloc, a Frenchman himself who was raised in England, cons ...
A Venetian adventurer, author, and lifelong womanizer, the name of Casanova has become interchangeable with the art of seduction since the 18th century. In his most notable book, «Story of My Life,» Casanova narrates countless tales of the people with whom he interacted: lovers, European royalty, clergymen, and artists such as Goethe, Voltaire, and Mozart. His writing demonstrates his talent for dialogue, while his life seems an inadvertent test ...
