Some Short Christmas Stories (Charles Dickens)

“Soldier, soldier come from the wars, I’ll down an’ die with my true love!” “The pit we dug’ll ‘ide ‘im an’ the twenty men beside ‘im— An’ you’d best go look for a new love.” “Soldier, soldier come from the wars, Do you bring no sign from my true love?” “I bring a lock of ‘air that ‘e allus used to wear, An’ you’d best go look for a new love.” “Soldier, soldier come from the wars, O then I know it’s true I’ve lost my true love!” “An’ I tell you truth again—when you’ve lost the feel o’ pain You’d best take me for your true love.” True love! New love! Best take ‘im for a new love, The dead they cannot rise, an’ you’d better dry your eyes, An’ you’d best take ‘im for your true love. Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English. Uyarı: Agora Bilim Pazarı'ndaki diğer birçok kitabın aksine, bu kitap İngilizcedir.

The themes of the book are nostalgia, the folly of trying to go back and recapture past glories and the easy way the dreams and aspirations of one’s youth can be smothered by the humdrum routine of work, marriage and getting old. It is written in the first person, with George Bowling, the forty-five-year-old protagonist, who reveals his life and experiences while undertaking a trip back to his boyhood home as an adult. At the opening of the book, Bowling has a day off work to go to London to collect a new set of false teeth. A newsposter about the contemporary King Zog of Albania sets off thoughts of a biblical character Og, King of Bashan that he recalls from Sunday church as a child. Along with ‘some sound in the traffic or the smell of horse dung or something’ these thoughts trigger Bowling’s memory of his childhood as the son of an unambitious seed merchant in “Lower Binfield” near the River Thames. Bowling relates his life history, dwelling on how a lucky break during the First World War landed him in a comfortable job away from any action and provided contacts that helped him become a successful salesman. Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English. Uyarı: Agora Bilim Pazarı'ndaki diğer birçok kitabın aksine, bu kitap İngilizcedir.

A Clergyman's Daughter is a 1935 novel by English author George Orwell. It tells the story of Dorothy Hare, the clergyman's daughter of the title, whose life is turned upside down when she suffers an attack of amnesia. It is Orwell's most formally experimental novel, featuring a chapter written entirely in dramatic form, but he was never satisfied with it and he left instructions that after his death it was not to be reprinted. Despite these instructions, Orwell did consent to the printing of cheap editions "of any book which may bring in a few pounds for my heirs" following his death. Intimidated by her father, the rector of Knype Hill, Dorothy performs her submissive roles of dutiful daughter and bullied housekeeper. Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression England. Suddenly her routine shatters and Dorothy finds herself down and out in London. She is wearing silk stockings, has money in her pocket and cannot remember her name. Orwell leads us through a landscape of unemployment, poverty and hunger, where Dorothy's faith is challenged by a social reality that changes her life. Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English. Uyarı: Agora Bilim Pazarı'ndaki diğer birçok kitabın aksine, bu kitap İngilizcedir.

A Child’s History of England, it first appeared in serial form in Household Words, running from 25 January 1851 to 10 December 1853. Dickens also published the work in book form in three volumes: the first volume on 20 December 1851, the second on 25 December 1852 and the third on 24 December 1853. Although the volumes were published in December, each was postdated the following year.  Dickens dedicated the book to “My own dear children, whom I hope it may help, bye and bye, to read with interest larger and better books on the same subject”. The history covered the period between 50 BC and 1689, ending with a chapter summarising events from then until the accession of Queen Victoria. In a letter to his friend Douglas William Jerrold, Dickens confessed that he was composing the book so that he could prevent his children from embracing conservatism: “I am writing a little history of England for my boy... For I don’t know what I should do, if he were to get hold of any conservative or High Church notions; and the best way of guarding against any such horrible result is, I take it, to wring the parrots’ neck in his very cradle.” Warning: Unlike most of the books in our store, this book is in English. Uyarı: Agora Bilim Pazarı'ndaki diğer birçok kitabın aksine, bu kitap İngilizcedir.