Category: Novels

The scenes of this tragic tale are laid in the time of the bitter civil war in Ireland between the partizans of King James II and his son-in-law, William of Orange. ON the next day after James the Second was proclaimed King of Great Britain, a young Protestant gentleman and his sister, Robert and Esther […]

This story is a transcription of an Icelandic saga entitled Grettir the Strong. With only a Danish grammar of Icelandic available, Mr. Baring-Gould began the translation, first having to learn Danish. He was then a schoolmaster, and wrote after school hours. He had visited Iceland (1861) and had gone over the ground of Grettir’s experiences, […]

This book established Mrs. Barr’s popularity and has remained the greatest favorite among her many novels. It was the second book she wrote, being preceded by Jan Vedder’s Wife, also a story of New York under the Dutch. ATE one afternoon of May, 1765, in the picturesque little city of New York, a group of […]

Much of this little story is acknowledged by the author to be autobiographical. Jess is drawn from Mr. Barrie’s own mother, who was afterward more carefully pictured in his novel entitled Margaret Ogilvy; while Leeby is a portrait of his sister. The author’s own character has much in common with Jamie; and the little village […]

This romance first appeared serially in Good Words in 1891, and was issued the same year in book form. It was dramatized by its author in 1897, and was received with great favor both in England and the United States. The scene of the tale is the market-town of Kirriemuir, Forfarshire, Scotland, about sixty miles […]

This is the first of Irving Bacheller’s series of successful novels. Two tales from his pen—The Master of Silence and The Unbidden Guest—had been published previously, but they had attracted comparatively little attention. Eben Holden was begun as a juvenile story, but when about ten chapters had been written the purpose was altered and it […]

This story, completed the year before its writer’s death, and published the year following this event, appearing first serially in the Century Magazine, was the result of Mr. Balestier’s study of Leadville, Colorado, visited by him in 1885. Two years earlier he had made a brief sojourn in this portion of Colorado, which had profoundly […]

This story of the days of the ” grand monarch” has long been a favorite and was successfully dramatized. AT a brilliant function in the grand gallery of the palace at Versailles in the second half of his reign, Louis XIV saw his mistress, Madame de Montespan, flirting audaciously with the Vicomte de Montarnaud, a […]

Among the many pleasantly farcical tales by this author, none is more popular than the following, which has been dramatized for the Italian stage. GASTELNUOVO BEDONIA, a manufacturing town on the slope of the Apennines, rejoiced in the possession of a forceful Subprefect. He and his wife—they had no children—were quartered, along with many other […]

The author planned and began this story, and then laid it aside as too painful. Upon his repeating the plot to Mr. Howells, however, he was encouraged to finish it. The comedy scenes between Elsie and Dr. Wilson were introduced largely to enliven the story and by contrast to heighten the pathos of the loneliness […]