Rudyard KIPLING - If (poem)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, 
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

Henry BEERBOHM - Zuleika Dobson

• H.M.Beerbohm 'Zuleika Dobson' в оригинале и переводе
• Полезные ресурсы для изучающих английский язык
• Виджет 'English Reading'

Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (1872 – 1956)

Born in England, studied at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford. He started his career as a secretary in the theatrical company in the USA. On his return to the UK he began publishing essays and books, besides he was a successful parodist and caricaturist. He wrote: The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896), The Happy Hypocrite (1897), More (1899), Yet Again (1909), Zuleika Dobson (1911), A Christmas Garland (1912), Seven Men (1919), And Even Now (1920), A Peep into the Past (1923), Around Theatres (1924), A Variety of Things (1928), The Dreadful Dragon of Hay Hill (1928), Mainly on the Air (1946), etc.

 

John BUCHAN - The Thirty-Nine Steps

John Buchan (1875 – 1940) Born in Scotland, studied at the University of Glasgow and at Brasenose College, Oxford. He wrote: Sir Quixote of the Moors (1895), Scholar-Gipsies (1896), The Watcher by the Treshold (1902), The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), Greenmantle (1916), The Dancing Floor (1926), The Gap in the Curtain (1932), The  House of the Four Winds (1935), etc.

'The Thirty-Nine Steps' by John Buchan 'Nonsense!' said the official from the Admiralty. Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with a long face. 'I have spoken to Alloa,' he said. 'Had him out of bed—very grumpy. He went straight home after Mulross's dinner.' 'But it's madness,' broke in General Winstanley. 'Do you mean to tell me that that man came here and sat beside me for the best part of half an hour and that I didn't detect the imposture? Alloa must be out of his mind.'

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1. George Grossmith - The Diary of a Nobody
2. Philip Chesterfield - Letters to his Son
3. Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland
4. Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (+ Movie clip)
5. Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
6. Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe (+Movie Clip)
7. Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat (+Movie Clip)
8. George Orwell - Animal Farm (+Cartoon)
9. Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent (+Movie Trailer)

James Joyce 'ULYSSES'

James Joyce (1882 – 1941)

Born in Dublin, Ireland. He studied in Dublin University College, became a tutor in English, formed a company of English players in Zurich. He wrote Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), Work in Progress (1927), Finnegans Wake (1939).

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: --INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI. Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely: --Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!  Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.

The Invisible Man by H.G.Wells

Herbert George Wells (1866 – 1946)

Born in Bromley, London. Started as a schoolmaster in natural sciences, he took to writing articles for the papers.Wrote the books: The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), When the Sleeper Wakes (1910), The First Men in the Moon (1901), Tono-Bungay (1909), The World Set Free (1914), Russia in the Shadows (1920), etc.

'The Invisible Man' by Herbert G. Wells The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried. He staggered into the "Coach and Horses" more dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried, "in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table, he took up his quarters in the inn.

John FALKNER - Moonfleet

John Meade Falkner (1858 – 1932)

Born in Manningford Bruce, Wiltshire, England. He attended Marlborough College, then Hertford College at Oxford University. He wrote The Lost Stradivarius (1895), Moonfleet (1898), The Nebuly Coat (1903).

Moonfleet  by John M. Falkner The village of Moonfleet lies half a mile from the sea on the right or west bank of the Fleet stream. I shall first speak of one evening in the fall of the year 1757. It must have been late in October, though I have forgotten the exact date, and I sat in the little front parlour reading after tea. My aunt had few books; a Bible, a Common Prayer, and some volumes of sermons are all that I can recollect now; but the Reverend Mr Glennie, who taught us village children, had lent me a story-hook, full of interest and adventure, called the Arabian Nights Entertainment. At last the light began to fail, and I was nothing loth to leave off reading for several reasons; as, first the parlour was a chilly room with horse-hair chairs and sofa, and only a coloured-paper screen in the grate, for my aunt did not allow a fire till the first of November; second, there was a rank smell of molten tallow in the house, for my aunt was dipping winter candles on frames in the back kitchen; third, I had reached a part in the Arabian Nights which tightened my breath and made me wish to leave off reading for very anxiousness of expectation. It was that point in the story of the "Wonderful Lamp", where the false uncle lets fall a stone that seals the mouth of the underground chamber; and immures the boy, Aladdin, in the darkness, because he would not give up the lamp till he stood safe on the surface again. This scene reminded me of one of those dreadful nightmares, where we dream we are shut in a line room, the walls of which are closing in upon us, and so impressed me that the memory of it served as a warning in an adventure that befell me later on.

John GALSWORTHY - The Forsyte Saga

John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933)

Born in Kingston Hill, Surrey, England. He studied at Oxford. He was awarded by the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. He wrote The Forsyte Saga (1906-1928), Strife (1909), Justice (1910), The Skin Game (1920).

'The Forsyte Saga' Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature…

Kim by Rudyard KIPLING

Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936)

Born in Mumbai, India. He studied at boarding school in England, in 1882 he returned to India to work as a journalist. In 1889 he returned to London, in 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He wrote Plain Tales From the Hills (1892), Barrack Room Ballads (1892), The Seven Seas (1896), Jungle Books (1894-1895), Kim (1901), Just So Stories (1902), Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), Something of Myself (1937).

There was some justification for Kim - he had kicked Lala Dinanath's boy off the trunnions - since the English held the Punjab and Kim was English. Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white - a poor white of the very poorest.

William S. Maugham - The Moon and Sixpence

William Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965)

Born in Paris, France. He studied at Canterbury and Heidelberg, qualified as a surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital, London. He wrote Liza of Lambeth (1897), Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Circle (1921), The Trembling of a Leaf (1921), East of Suez (1922), Cakes and Ale (1930), The Complete Short Stories (3 vols) in 1951.  

I confess that when first I made acquaintance with Charles Strickland I never for a moment discerned that there was in him anything out of the ordinary.  Yet now few will be found to deny his greatness.  I do not speak of that greatness which is achieved by the fortunate politician or the successful soldier; that is a quality which belongs to the place he occupies rather than to the man; and a change of circumstances reduces it to very discreet proportions.  The Prime Minister out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous rhetorician, and the General without an army is but the tame hero of a market town. 

Robert Stevenson - Across the Plains

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He studied at Edinburgh, dropped the profession of lawyer and began to write travel sketches and short stories. He wrote Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), The Master of Ballantrae (1889), the unfinished Weir of Hermiston (1896), others.

Monday. — It was, if I remember rightly, five o’clock when we were all signalled to be present at the Ferry Depot of the railroad.  An emigrant ship had arrived at New York on the Saturday night, another on the Sunday morning, our own on Sunday afternoon, a fourth early on Monday; and as there is no emigrant train on Sunday a great part of the passengers from these four ships was concentrated on the train by which I was to travel.  There was a babel of bewildered men, women, and children.  The wretched little booking-office, and the baggage-room, which was not much larger, were crowded thick with emigrants, and were heavy and rank with the atmosphere of dripping clothes.  Open carts full of bedding stood by the half-hour in the rain.  The officials loaded each other with recriminations.  A bearded, mildewed little man, whom I take to have been an emigrant agent, was all over the place, his mouth full of brimstone, blustering and interfering.  It was plain that the whole system, if system there was, had utterly broken down under the strain of so many passengers.

Rafael Sabatini - Captain Blood

Rafael Sabatini (1875 – 1950)

Born in Jesi, Italy. In 1905 he settled in England, wrote in English The Tavern Knight (1904), The Sea Hawk (1915), Scaramouche (1921), Captain Blood (1922), others.

PETER BLOOD, bachelor of medicine and several other things besides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater. Sternly disapproving eyes considered him from a window opposite, but went disregarded. Mr. Blood's attention was divided between his task and the stream of humanity in the narrow street below; a stream which poured for the second time that day towards Castle Field, where earlier in the afternoon Ferguson, the Duke's chaplain, had preached a sermon containing more treason than divinity.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventure of the Empty House

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930)

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, but later gave it up. He wrote A Study in Scarlet (1887), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891–3), The White Company (1890), The War in South Africa (1902). 

It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London was interested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicable circumstances.  The public has already learned those particulars of the crime which came out in the police investigation; but a good deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case for the prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was not necessary to bring forward all the facts... The crime was of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to me compared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me the greatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life.  Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I think of it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement, and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind. Let me say to that public which has shown some interest in those glimpses which I have occasionally given them of the thoughts and actions of a very remarkable man that they are not to blame me if I have not shared my knowledge with them, for I should have considered it my first duty to have done so had I not been barred by a positive prohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn upon the third of last month.

John Strachey - The Adventure of Living

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John St Loe Strachey (1860 – 1927)

Born in Britain. A British journalist and newspaper proprietor.

But though I was so fully convinced that the doors of The Spectator were shut against me, I was, of course, determined that my two reviews should, if possible, make the editors feel what a huge mistake they had made and what a loss they were incurring.  But, alas! here I encountered a great disappointment.  When I had written my reviews they appeared to me to be total failures!  I was living at the time in an “upper part” in South Molton Street, in which I, my younger brother, Henry Strachey, and two of my greatest friends, the present Sir Bernard Mallet and his younger brother Stephen Mallet, had set up house.  I remember to this day owning to my brother that though I had intended my review of Gulliver’s Travels to be epoch-making, it had turned out a horrible fiasco.  However, I somehow felt I should only flounder deeper into the quagmire of my own creation if I rewrote the two reviews.  Accordingly, they were sent off in the usual way.  Knowing my father’s experience in such matters, I did not expect to get them back in type for many weeks.  As a matter of fact, they came back quite quickly.  I corrected the proofs and returned them.  To my astonishment the review of Swift appeared almost at once.  I supposed, in the luxury of depression, that they wished to cast the rubbish out of the way as quickly as possible.

Joseph Conrad - The Secret Agent (+Movie Trailer)

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Joseph Conrad (Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) (1857 – 1924)

Born in Berdichev, the Ukraine. After his service in the British merchant navy he got the British citizenship in 1886. He wrote Almayer's Folly (1895), The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), The Secret Agent (1907), Under Western Eyes (1911), Chance (1914)and many short stories.

Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law.  It could be done, because there was very little business at any time, and practically none at all before the evening.  Mr Verloc cared but little about his ostensible business.  And, moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law. The shop was small, and so was the house.  It was one of those grimy brick houses which existed in large quantities before the era of reconstruction dawned upon London.  The shop was a square box of a place, with the front glazed in small panes.  In the daytime the door remained closed; in the evening it stood discreetly but suspiciously ajar.

George Orwell - Animal Farm (+Cartoon)

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (1903 - 1950)

Born in Motihari, Bengal, India. He studied at Eton, served in Indian Imperial Police, and soon moved to London, later to Paris. He fought for the Republicans in Spain, worked a war correspondent in the World War II period. He wrote Down  and Out in Paris and London (1933), Burmese Days (1934), A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), The Road to Wigan Pier (1936),  Homage to Catalonia (1938), The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), Animal Farm (1945), 1984 (1949).

All the animals were now present except Moses, the tame raven, who slept on a perch behind the back door. When Major saw that they had all made themselves comfortable and were waiting attentively, he cleared his throat and began:

Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat (+Movie Clip)

Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859 - 1927)

Born in Walsall, Staffordshire, England. He worked a clerk, schoolmaster, reporter, actor, journalist, and editor of a weekly. In 1889 he wrote the well-known novel Three Men in a Boat, in 1900 - Three Men on the Bummel and in 1902 - Paul Kelver.

A picture would have come home from the frame-maker’s, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say: “Oh, you leave that to me.  Don’t you, any of you, worry yourselves about that.  I’ll do all that.”

Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe (+Movie Clip)

Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731)

Born in London, England. He trained at a dissenting academy, traveled in Europe. In 1702 he was imprisoned for seditious libel, released in 1704. He wrote The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), Robinson Crusoe (1719-1720), A Journal of the Plague Year and Moll Flanders (1722), Roxana (1724).

The wave that came upon me again buried me at once twenty or thirty feet deep in its own body, and I could feel myself carried with a mighty force and swiftness towards the shore — a very great way; but I held my breath, and assisted myself to swim still forward with all my might.  I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up, so, to my immediate relief, I found my head and hands shoot out above the surface of the water; and though it was not two seconds of time that I could keep myself so, yet it relieved me greatly, gave me breath, and new courage.  I was covered again with water a good while, but not so long but I held it out; and finding the water had spent itself, and began to return, I struck forward against the return of the waves, and felt ground again with my feet.  I stood still a few moments to recover breath, and till the waters went from me, and then took to my heels and ran with what strength I had further towards the shore.  But neither would this deliver me from the fury of the sea, which came pouring in after me again; and twice more I was lifted up by the waves and carried forward as before, the shore being very flat.

Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832 - 1898)

Born in Daresbury, Chesire, England. He studied at Oxford and became a lecturer in mathematics. He wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872).

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole:  she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw.  How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,’ thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders.  Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope!  I think I could, if I only know how to begin.’  For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

Philip Chesterfield - Letters to his Son

Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, 4^th Earl of (1694 -1773)

Born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, became a Member of Parliament in 1715, an Ambassador in 1726. Later he occupied various state positions, the latter was the post of state secretary in the period of 1746-1748. Letters to his Son were published in 1774.

I received, yesterday, your letter of the 16th.