(1783-1784) by Dorothy Kilner INTRODUCTION During a remarkably severe winter, when a prodigious fall of snow confined everybody to their habitations, who were happy enough to have one to shelter the...

By Andrew Lang PREFATORY NOTE The pages in this volume on illuminated and other MSS. (with the exception of some anecdotes about Bussy Rabutin and Julie de Rambouillet) have been contributed by the Re...

by Washington Irving Found among the papers of the late Diedrech Knickerbocker. A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds ...

CHAPTER I In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by the long, hot summer, and the long, hot work it had b...

'If you talk of Murphy and Francis Moore, gentlemen,' said the lamplighter who was in the chair, 'I mean to say that neither of 'em ever had any more to do with the stars than Tom Grig had.' 'And what...

Mowgli's Brothers Now Rann the Kite brings home the night That Mang the Bat sets free-- The herds are shut in byre and hut For loosed till dawn are we. This is the hour of pride and power, Talon and t...

by Henry Fielding INTRODUCTION TO SEVERAL WORKS When it was determined to extend the present edition of Fielding, not merely by the addition of Jonathan Wild to the three universally popular novels, b...

by Thomas a Kempis Translated by Rev. William Benham INTRODUCTORY NOTE The treatise "Of the Imitation of Christ" appears to have been originally written in Latin early in the fifteenth century. Its ex...

by JEROME K. JEROME. PREFACE One or two friends to whom I showed these papers in MS. having observed that they were not half bad, and some of my relations having promised to buy the book if it ever ...

Lewis Carroll PREFACE If-and the thing is wildly possible-the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, o...