Hard Times (Charles Dickens)
Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era.
Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens’s novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based on 19th-century Preston.
One of Dickens’s reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical Household Words were low, and it was hoped the novel’s publication in installments would boost circulation – as indeed proved to be the case. Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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Wee Willie and Other Stories (Rudyard Kipling)
Percival William Williams, who is affectionately called ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ because of the nursery rhyme, is the only son of the Colonel of the 195th. The six-year-old is well-liked by everyone in the regiment, but becomes especially good friends with a subaltern he nicknames ‘Coppy’. One day, Winkie confesses to Coppy that he saw Coppy kissing Miss Allardyce, whose father is a Major. Coppy persuades Winkie to keep silent about the matter, since he is engaged to Miss Allardyce, but they haven’t announced it yet. Three weeks later, Winkie sees Miss Allardyce ride
her horse across the river in an attempt to prove her mettle. He knows that the ‘Bad Men’ (who he equates with the goblins in a storybook) live on the other side of the river, so he rides out after her, even though he is grounded. Miss Allardyce’s horse stumbles and falls, and Miss Allardyce twists her ankle. Winkie catches up to her and sends his pony, Jack, back to the cantonment for help as some natives approach. The natives debate whether to return Miss Allardyce and Winkie for a reward or hold them for ransom. When Winkie’s riderless horse returns to the cantonment, E Company immediately marshals and sets out to find him. The Company frightens away the natives, and Winkie is lauded as a hero for saving Miss Allardyce. He announces that people should start calling him by his given name because, as the narrator says, he has “enter[ed] into his manhood.”
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (Lewis Caroll)
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (also known as Alice Through the Looking-Glass or simply Through the Looking-Glass) is a novel published on December 27, 1871 (though indicated as 1872) by Lewis Carroll and the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just like a reflection, everything is reversed, including logic (for example, running helps one remain stationary, walking away from
something brings one towards it, chessmen are alive, nursery rhyme characters exist, and so on).
Through the Looking-Glass includes such verses as “Jabberwocky” and “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, and the episode involving Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The mirror above the fireplace that is displayed at Hetton Lawn in Charlton Kings, Gloucestershire (a house that was owned by Alice Liddell’s grandparents, and was regularly visited by Alice and Lewis Carroll) resembles the one drawn by John Tenniel and is cited as a possible inspiration for Carroll.
It was the first of the “Alice” stories to gain widespread popularity, and prompted a newfound appreciation for its predecessor when it was published.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Charles Dickens)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens, originally published in 1870.
Though the novel is named after the character Edwin Drood, it focuses more on Drood’s uncle, John Jasper, a precentor, choirmaster and opium addict, who is in love with his pupil, Rosa Bud. Miss Bud, Edwin Drood’s fiancée, has also caught the eye of the high-spirited and hot-tempered Neville Landless. Landless and Edwin Drood take an instant dislike to each other. Later Drood disappears under mysterious circumstances. The story is set in Cloisterham, a lightly disguised Rochester.
Upon the death of Dickens on June 9, 1870, the novel was left unfinished, only six of a planned twelve instalments having been published. He left no detailed plan for the remaining installments or solution to the novel’s mystery, and many later adaptations and continuations by other writers have attempted to complete the story.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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The Holly – Tree Inn (Charles Dickens)
The first of three Holly Trees opened in Chicago in June 1872, and Gollin says that “over the next few years dozens of other Holly Trees opened in other cities, many of them after consultation with Annie.” An 1874 New York Times article refers to a “Holly-Tree Coffee-house Movement.” The name was a tribute to Charles Dickens. It echoed the title of a Charles Dickens story, “The Boots at the Holly Tree Inn.” The story merely names the inn in passing; the 1855 issue of Household Words was entitled The Holly Tree Inn and was a collection of pieces and stories about
the fictitious inn. Gollin notes that Fields heard Dickens read the story on an 1867 visit to Boston, and Fields was touched by the “cheerful Christmas story about warm relationships that cross class divisions.” The name was also a reference to the beneficent holly tree at [Dickens] graveside.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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The Battle of Life (Charles Dickens)
The Battle of Life is an 1846 novel by Charles Dickens. It is the fourth of his five “Christmas Books”, coming after The Cricket on the Hearth and followed by The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain.
The setting is an English village that stands on the site of an historic battle. Some characters refer to the battle as a metaphor for the struggles of life, hence the title.
Battle is the only one of the five Christmas Books that has no supernatural or explicitly religious elements. (One scene takes place at Christmas time, but it is not the final scene.) The story bears some resemblance to The Cricket on the Hearth in two respects: it has a non-urban setting, and it is resolved with a romantic twist. It is even less of a social novel than is Cricket. As is typical with Dickens, the ending is a happy one.
It is one of Dickens’s lesser-known works and has never attained any high level of popularity – a trait it shares with The Haunted Man, in contrast to the other of his Christmas Books.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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Sylvie and Bruno (Lewis Caroll)
Sylvie and Bruno, first published in 1889, and its second volume Sylvie and Bruno Concluded published in 1893, form the last novel by Lewis Carroll published during his lifetime. The novel has two main plots: one set in the real world at the time the book was published (the Victorian era), the other in the fantasy world of Fairyland. While the latter plot is a fairy tale with many nonsense elements and poems, similar to Carroll’s Alice books, the story set in Victorian Britain is a social novel, with its characters discussing various concepts and aspects of religion, society, philosophy and morality.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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Sex and Repression in Savage Society (Bronislaw Malinowski)
During the First World War the pioneer anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski found himself stranded on the Trobriand Islands, off the eastern coast of New Guinea. By living among the people he studied there, speaking their language and participating in their activities, he invented what became known as ‘participant-observation’. This new type of ethnographic study was to have a huge impact on the emerging discipline of anthropology. In Sex and Repression in Savage Society Malinowski applied his experiences on the Trobriand Islands to the study of sexuality, and the attendant issues of eroticism, obscenity, incest, oppression, power and parenthood. In so doing, he both utilized and challenged the psychoanalytical methods being popularized at the time in Europe by Freud and others. The result is a unique and brilliant book that, though revolutionary when first published, has since become a standard work on the psychology of sex.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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One Peach a Thousand Peaches (Samed Behrengi)
One Peach, A Thousand Peaches is a story of a friendship between two poor boys and a peach tree. Sahip Ali and Polat find a peach in the landlord of the village's garden which is protected by a greedy gardener, and they decide to plant its seed. However, one day life separates them and the peach tree whose only aim is to grow fruit for his friends says:
“That greedy gardener will have never got a fruit from me. I will not surrender. He can do whatever he want I am not afraid if he scare me, threaten me, even cut me with his saw. I do not care if he does the opposite and decides to treat me well. I will not fall for it. I will not surrender.”
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
Mrs. Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War England. It is one of Woolf’s best-known novels.
The working title of Mrs. Dalloway was The Hours. The novel began as two short stories, “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” and the unfinished “The Prime Minister”. It describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forward and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. In October 2005, Mrs. Dalloway was included on Time’s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since Time debuted in 1923.
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that evening. The nice day reminds her of her youth spent in the countryside in Bourton and makes her wonder about her choice of husband; she had married the reliable Richard Dalloway instead of the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh, and she “had not the option” to be with a female romantic interest, Sally Seton. Peter reintroduces these conflicts by paying a visit that morning.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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Flush: A Biography (Virginia Woolf)
Flush: A Biography, an imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, is a cross-genre blend of fiction and nonfiction by Virginia Woolf published in 1933. Written after the completion of her emotionally draining The Waves, the work returned Woolf to the imaginative consideration of English history that she had begun in Orlando: A Biography, and to which she would return in Between the Acts.
Commonly read as a modernist consideration of city life seen through the eyes of a dog, Flush serves as a harsh criticism of the supposedly unnatural ways of living in the city. The figure of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the text is often read as an analogue for other female intellectuals, like Woolf herself, who suffered from illness, feigned or real, as a part of their status as female writers. Most insightful and experimental are Woolf's emotional andphilosophical views verbalised in Flush's thoughts. As he spends more time with Barrett Browning, Flush becomes emotionally and spiritually connected to the poet and both begin to understand each other despite their language barriers. For Flush smell is poetry, but for Barrett Browning, poetry is impossible without words. In Flush Woolf, examines the barriers that exist between woman and animal created by language yet overcome through symbolic actions.
Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English.
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