'The Ostler" was originally published in 1855 as a short story, which later became the foundation for the much longer story 'The Dream Woman.' It is one of Wilkie Collins' first supernatural stories, revolving around the forty-year-old Isaac Scatchard, who has a very strange dream of a young woman – or wasn't it a dream, but a ghost? Seven years later he even gets more lost when he encounters a woman who looks very much ...
Wilkie Collins possesses the art of writing plays and stories so as to awaken and sustain the interest of the reader. He can create and work out a plot. It is true that the subject-matter of the plot is generally rather trivial, the characters commonplace, the whole tone and cast of the work conventional and insignificant. But the story, such as it is, has the merit of being neatly and pleasantly told. The author has set himself assiduously to i ...
One of the principal characters in Mr. Collins's «Hide and Seek» is an artist; but the writer has not sketched him as labouring in his vocation amid alternations of despair and hope. «The painter in this story,» he says, «only assumes to be a homely study from nature, done by a student who has had more opportunities than most men, out of the profession, of observing what the novelties of artist-life, and the eccentricities of artist-charact ...
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who first appeared in publication in 1887. He is the creation of Scottish born author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skillful use of deductive reasoning (somewhat mistakenly – see inductive reasoning) and astute observation to solve difficult cases. H ...
A good bookshelf is not complete without this charming little tale. It is founded on what was related to the author as a fact, as to the first obtaining of the well-known cast of the face of Shakespeare, by a stonemason, who was repairing the church at Stratford-on Avon. He was found out, and by the local authorities forthwith threatened with severe penalties; and not knowing how far his deed was culpable, and their threats dangerous, he thought ...
Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century l ...
The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated and even somewhat pampered dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events finds him serving as a sled dog in the treacherous, frigid Yukon during the days of the 19th century Klondike Gold Rushes. Published in 1903, The Call of the Wild is one of London's most-read books, and it is generally considered one ...
Der Roman wurde weltberuhmt, weil er wie unter einem Brennglas die Zeit von 1805 bis 1812 aus russischer Sicht in beeindruckender Geschlossenheit darstellt, in Verbindung eines gesellschaftlichen und familiaren Erzahlstrangs mit dem der Kriegshandlungen, wobei personale Beziehungsgeschichten und Staatsaktionen miteinander wechseln. Diese Handlungen beziehen sich auf ein philosophisches Zentrum: Das Menschen- und Weltbild des Autors. Einmal, im G ...
"Vielleicht braucht die Welt keine Helden, vielleicht braucht sie uns." Medusa, eine magisch begabte und unter Schlafentzug leidende Zwanzigjahrige, wandert jede Nacht in die Traume anderer Leute. Als sie wiederholt denselben Albtraum miterlebt, erkennt sie, dass mehr hinter diesem stecken muss. Sie beschlie?t, der Sache nachzugehen, in der Hoffnung, danach endlich wieder ruhig schlafen zu konnen. Doch muss Medusa bald feststellen, dass ei ...
