Wilde / Irving / Kipling Big Book of Best Short Stories - Volume 1

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-96858-366-2
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 1994 Seiten

Reihe: Big Book of Best Short Stories

This book contains 70 short stories from 10 classic, prize-winning and noteworthy authors. The stories were carefully selected by the critic August Nemo, in a collection that will please the literature lovers. For more exciting titles, be sure to check out our 7 Best Short Stories and Essential Novelists collections. This book contains: - Washington Irving:The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Rip Van Winkle The Devil and Tom Walker Christmas Guest from Gibbet Island The Legend of the Engulphed Convent The Adventure of my Uncle - Oscar Wilde:Lord Arthur Savile's Crime The Sphinx without a Secret A Model Millionaire The Happy Prince The Fisherman and his Soul The Nightingale and the Rose The Young King - Bram Stoker:The Castle of the King A Star Trap The Secret of the Growing Gold The Burial of the Rats Dracula's Guest The Squaw The Judge's House - H.G. Wells:The Time Machine A Dream Of Armageddon The Crystal Egg The Man Who Could Work Miracles The Flowering of the Strange Orchid The Sea Riders The Apple - Arthur Conan Doyle:A Scandal In Bohemia The Five Orange Pips The Disintegration Machine When the World Screamed The Great Keinplatz Experiment The Horror of the Heights The Ring of Thoth - E.T.A. Hoffman:The Golden Pot The Sandman Councillor Krespela Automata The Elementary Spirit The Jesuits' Church in G-- The Story of the Hard Nut - Rudyard Kipling:The Mark of the Beast The Phantom 'Rickshaw Mowgli's Brothers (from the Jungle Book) Kaa's Hunting (from the Jungle Book) Tiger! Tiger! (from the Jungle Book) The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes The Man Who Would Be King - Franz Kafka:The Metamorphosis A Hunger Artist In the penal colony The Judgment Before the Law A Country Doctor A Report to an Academy - H.P. Lovecraft:The Call of Cthulhu The Outsider Pickman's Model The Statement of Randolph Carter The Colour out of Space The Dunwich Horror The Music of Erich Zann - Edgar Allan Poe:The Tell-Tale Heart The Cask of Amontillado The Masque of the Red Death The Pit and the Pendulum The Fall of the House of Usher The Murders in the Rue Morgue The Black Cat

Washington Irving was born in New York in 1783, he is known for his biographical works and such stories as 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' *** Oscar Wilde, born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, was a popular literary figure in late Victorian England, known for his brilliant wit, flamboyant style and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality. *** Bram Stoker was born in Ireland in 1847, he is best known for authoring the classic 19th century horror novel 'Dracula. *** H.G. Wells was born in England in 1866. His first novel, The Time Machine was an instant success and Wells produced a series of science fiction novels which pioneered our ideas of the future. *** Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on May 22, 1859, . In 1890 his novel, A Study in Scarlet, introduced the character of Detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle would go on to write 60 stories about Sherlock Holmes. *** E.T.A. Hoffmann, born January 24, 1776, Königsberg, Prussia, was a German writer, composer, and painter known for his stories in which supernatural and sinister characters move in and out of men's lives, ironically revealing tragic or grotesque sides of human nature. *** Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India. The author is famous for an array of works like 'Just So Stories' and 'The Jungle Book.' He received the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilde, Oscar

Irving, Washington

Kipling, Rudyard

Nemo, August

Hoffmann, E.T.A.

Stoker, Bram

Doyle, Arthur Conan

Wells, H. G.

A, Edgar

Poe, Edgar Allan

Kafka, Franz

Lovecraft, H. P.

Leseproben

Oscar Wilde portrait Oscar Wilde was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of the Victorian Era.  In his lifetime he wrote nine plays, one novel, and numerous poems, short stories, and essays. Wilde was a proponent of the Aesthetic movement, which emphasized aesthetic values more than moral or social themes. This doctrine is most clearly summarized in the phrase 'art for art's sake'. Besides literary accomplishments, he is also famous, or perhaps infamous, for his wit, flamboyance, and affairs with men. He was tried and imprisoned for his homosexual relationship with the son of an aristocrat. Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime – a study of duty
I
IT WAS LADY WINDERMERE’S last reception before Easter, and Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual.  Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker’s Levée in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsrühe, a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds, talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing immoderately at everything that was said to her.  It was certainly a wonderful medley of people.  Gorgeous peeresses chatted affably to violent Radicals, popular preachers brushed coat-tails with eminent sceptics, a perfect bevy of bishops kept following a stout prima-donna from room to room, on the staircase stood several Royal Academicians, disguised as artists, and it was said that at one time the supper-room was absolutely crammed with geniuses.  In fact, it was one of Lady Windermere’s best nights, and the Princess stayed till nearly half-past eleven. As soon as she had gone, Lady Windermere returned to the picture-gallery, where a celebrated political economist was solemnly explaining the scientific theory of music to an indignant virtuoso from Hungary, and began to talk to the Duchess of Paisley.  She looked wonderfully beautiful with her grand ivory throat, her large blue forget-me-not eyes, and her heavy coils of golden hair.  Or pur they were—not that pale straw colour that nowadays usurps the gracious name of gold, but such gold as is woven into sunbeams or hidden in strange amber; and they gave to her face something of the frame of a saint, with not a little of the fascination of a sinner.  She was a curious psychological study.  Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.  She had more than once changed her husband; indeed, Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal about her.  She was now forty years of age, childless, and with that inordinate passion for pleasure which is the secret of remaining young. Suddenly she looked eagerly round the room, and said, in her clear contralto voice, ‘Where is my cheiromantist?’ ‘Your what, Gladys?’ exclaimed the Duchess, giving an involuntary start. ‘My cheiromantist, Duchess; I can’t live without him at present.’ ‘Dear Gladys! you are always so original,’ murmured the Duchess, trying to remember what a cheiromantist really was, and hoping it was not the same as a cheiropodist. ‘He comes to see my hand twice a week regularly,’ continued Lady Windermere, ‘and is most interesting about it.’ ‘Good heavens!’ said the Duchess to herself, ‘he is a sort of cheiropodist after all.  How very dreadful.  I hope he is a foreigner at any rate.  It wouldn’t be quite so bad then.’ ‘I must certainly introduce him to you.’ ‘Introduce him!’ cried the Duchess; ‘you don’t mean to say he is here?’ and she began looking about for a small tortoise-shell fan and a very tattered lace shawl, so as to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. ‘Of course he is here; I would not dream of giving a party without him.  He tells me I have a pure psychic hand, and that if my thumb had been the least little bit shorter, I should have been a confirmed pessimist, and gone into a convent.’ ‘Oh, I see!’ said the Duchess, feeling very much relieved; ‘he tells fortunes, I suppose?’ ‘And misfortunes, too,’ answered Lady Windermere, ‘any amount of them.  Next year, for instance, I am in great danger, both by land and sea, so I am going to live in a balloon, and draw up my dinner in a basket every evening.  It is all written down on my little finger, or on the palm of my hand, I forget which.’ ‘But surely that is tempting Providence, Gladys.’ ‘My dear Duchess, surely Providence can resist temptation by this time.  I think every one should have their hands told once a month, so as to know what not to do.  Of course, one does it all the same, but it is so pleasant to be warned.  Now if some one doesn’t go and fetch Mr. Podgers at once, I shall have to go myself.’ ‘Let me go, Lady Windermere,’ said a tall handsome young man, who was standing by, listening to the conversation with an amused smile. ‘Thanks so much, Lord Arthur; but I am afraid you wouldn’t recognise him.’ ‘If he is as wonderful as you say, Lady Windermere, I couldn’t well miss him.  Tell me what he is like, and I’ll bring him to you at once.’ ‘Well, he is not a bit like a cheiromantist.  I mean he is not mysterious, or esoteric, or romantic-looking.  He is a little, stout man, with a funny, bald head, and great gold-rimmed spectacles; something between a family doctor and a country attorney.  I’m really very sorry, but it is not my fault.  People are so annoying.  All my pianists look exactly like poets, and all my poets look exactly like pianists; and I remember last season asking a most dreadful conspirator to dinner, a man who had blown up ever so many people, and always wore a coat of mail, and carried a dagger up his shirt-sleeve; and do you know that when he came he looked just like a nice old clergyman, and cracked jokes all the evening?  Of course, he was very amusing, and all that, but I was awfully disappointed; and when I asked him about the coat of mail, he only laughed, and said it was far too cold to wear in England.  Ah, here is Mr. Podgers!  Now, Mr. Podgers, I want you to tell the Duchess of Paisley’s hand.  Duchess, you must take your glove off.  No, not the left hand, the other.’ ‘Dear Gladys, I really don’t think it is quite right,’ said the Duchess, feebly unbuttoning a rather soiled kid glove. ‘Nothing interesting ever is,’ said Lady Windermere: ‘on a fait le monde ainsi.  But I must introduce you.  Duchess, this is Mr. Podgers, my pet cheiromantist.  Mr. Podgers, this is the Duchess of Paisley, and if you say that she has a larger mountain of the moon than I have, I will never believe in you again.’ ‘I am sure, Gladys, there is nothing of the kind in my hand,’ said the Duchess gravely. ‘Your Grace is quite right,’ said Mr. Podgers, glancing at the little fat hand with its short square fingers, ‘the mountain of the moon is not developed.  The line of life, however, is excellent.  Kindly bend the wrist.  Thank you.  Three distinct lines on the rascette!  You will live to a great age, Duchess, and be extremely happy.  Ambition—very moderate, line of intellect not exaggerated, line of heart—’ ‘Now, do be indiscreet, Mr. Podgers,’ cried Lady Windermere. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure,’ said Mr. Podgers, bowing, ‘if the Duchess ever had been, but I am sorry to say that I see great permanence of affection, combined with a strong sense of duty.’ ‘Pray go on, Mr. Podgers,’ said the Duchess, looking quite pleased. ‘Economy is not the least of your Grace’s virtues,’ continued Mr. Podgers, and Lady Windermere went off into fits of laughter. ‘Economy is a very good thing,’ remarked the Duchess complacently; ‘when I married Paisley he had eleven castles, and not a single house fit to live in.’ ‘And now he has twelve houses, and not a single castle,’ cried Lady Windermere. ‘Well, my dear,’ said the Duchess, ‘I like—’ ‘Comfort,’ said Mr. Podgers, ‘and modern improvements, and hot water laid on in every bedroom.  Your Grace is quite right.  Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us. ‘You have told the Duchess’s character admirably, Mr. Podgers, and now you must tell Lady Flora’s’; and in answer to a nod from the smiling hostess, a tall girl, with sandy Scotch hair, and high shoulder-blades, stepped awkwardly from behind the sofa, and held out a long, bony hand with spatulate fingers. ‘Ah, a pianist! I see,’ said Mr. Podgers, ‘an excellent pianist, but perhaps hardly a musician.  Very reserved, very honest, and with a great love of animals.’ ‘Quite true!’ exclaimed the Duchess, turning to Lady Windermere, ‘absolutely true!  Flora keeps two dozen collie dogs at Macloskie, and would turn our town house into a menagerie if her father would let her.’ ‘Well, that is just what I do with my house every Thursday evening,’ cried Lady Windermere, laughing, ‘only I...