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.

Great Britain and Her Queen - Annie E.KEELING

Annie E.Keeling

She wrote General Gordon: Hero and Saint, The Pride of the Family, William Dawson, The Oakhurst Chronicles, Andrew Golding, etc.

Great Britain and Her Queen Rather more than one mortal lifetime, as we average life in these later days, has elapsed since that June morning of 1837, when Victoria of England, then a fair young princess of eighteen, was roused from her tranquil sleep in the old palace at Kensington, and bidden to rise and meet the Primate, and his dignified associates the Lord Chamberlain and the royal physician, who "were come on business of state to the Queen"--words of startling import, for they meant that, while the royal maiden lay sleeping, the aged King, whose heiress she was, had passed into the deeper sleep of death. It is already an often-told story how promptly, on receiving that summons, the young Queen rose and came to meet her first homagers, standing before them in hastily assumed wrappings, her hair hanging loosely, her feet in slippers, but in all her hearing such royally firm composure as deeply impressed those heralds of her greatness, who noticed at the same moment that her eyes were full of tears.

Vanity Fair - William M.THACKERAY

William M. Thackeray (1811 – 1863)

Born in Calcutta, India. He studied at Cambridge, but left it without degree. He worked as a journalist and wrote Vanity Fair (1847-1848), Pendennis (1848), The Newcomes (1853-1855), Henry Esmond (1852).

Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. A black servant, who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton’s shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognized the little red nose of good- natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium pots in the window of that lady’s own drawing-room.

The Rainbow - David H.LAWRENCE

Born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. He studied at Nottingham University College, became a schoolmaster, later he left the profession. He wrote The White Peacock (1911), Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1919), Aaron’s Rod (1922), Kangaroo (1923), Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923), The Plumed Serpent (1926), Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928).

The Brangwens had lived for generations on the Marsh Farm, in the meadows where the Erewash twisted sluggishly through alder trees, separating Derbyshire from Nottinghamshire. Two miles away, a church - tower stood on a hill, the houses of the little country town climbing assiduously up to it. Whenever one of the Brangwens in the fields lifted his head from his work, he saw the church-tower at Ilkeston in the empty sky. So that as he turned again to the horizontal land, he was aware of something standing above him and beyond him in the distance.

The Gold-Bug - Edgar POE

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Studied at the University of Virginia, but soon left it, worked as a clerk, newspaper writer. Later was enlisted in the US Army as private. He wrote Tamurlane and Other Poems (1827), Politian (1835), The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), The Balloon-Hoax (1844),The Philosophy of Composition (1846), Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848),The Poetic Principle (1848),The Light-House (1849).

What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad! He hath been bitten by the Tarantula. All in the Wrong.  This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the main land by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favourite resort of the marsh- hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burdening the air with its fragrance.

The Grand Babylon Hotel - Arnold Bennett

  

Arnold Bennett (1867 – 1931)

Born near Hanley, Staffordshire, England. He studied at London University, clerked in London, soon became a journalist. He wrote The Man from the North (1898), Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives’ Tale (1908), Clavhanger (1910), Hild Lessways (1911), These Twain (1916).

'YES, sir?' Jules, the celebrated head waiter of the Grand Babylon, was bending formally towards the alert, middle-aged man who had just entered the smoking-room and dropped into a basket-chair in the corner by the conservatory. It was 7.45 on a particularly sultry June night, and dinner was about to be served at the Grand Babylon. Men of all sizes, ages, and nationalities, but every one alike arrayed in faultless evening dress, were dotted about the large, dim apartment. A faint odour of flowers came from the conservatory, and the tinkle of a fountain. The waiters, commanded by Jules, moved softly across the thick Oriental rugs, balancing their trays with the dexterity of jugglers, and receiving and executing orders with that air of profound importance of which only really first-class waiters have the secret. The atmosphere was an atmosphere of serenity and repose, characteristic of the Grand Babylon. It seemed impossible that anything could occur to mar the peaceful, aristocratic monotony of existence in that perfectly-managed establishment. Yet on that night was to happen the mightiest upheaval that the Grand Babylon had ever known.