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The Time Machine

H. G. Wells 1895 (A push on a lever, a blurry dizziness, a clap of thunder… and a veil falls away to reveal the world of our far distant descendants.) Breaking the rule that you have to proceed constantly forward in time at precisely one second per second is as old as the human imagination, […]

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The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

(Notre-Dame de Paris) Victor Hugo 1831 (Love for a young gypsy woman allows an ugly man to rise above the world’s hatred of him, and to show his inner beauty). Beauty and beast stories are thousands of years old. Here is how they generally go: a beautiful maiden somehow must associate with a character of […]

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Twain’s stories

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) 1865-1890 (A champion of common sense and nonsense casually delivers his colorful yarns, witty satires, and twisty dramas.) Sitting with Mark Twain when he’s in a storytelling mood, we get to know the man—or at least he leads us to believe we get to know him. He lets us in on […]

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The Mayor of Casterbridge

Thomas Hardy 1886 (The fortunes of a strong-willed hay-trusser prove to be as volatile as he is.) Michael Henchard is an unemployed field laborer who, under the influence of rum at a fair, impulsively starts to auction off his wife and baby daughter, to much laughter.  His wife stands.  A hush falls as a sailor actually puts five […]

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Songs and Sonets

John Donne d. 1631 (An earthy, imaginative, thoughtful soul reveals his view of love, steeped in metaphor and emotion.) Crop of Francesca da Rimini with her lover Paolo, by the Scottish painter William Dyce (1837).  This painting can be seen in the National Galleries of Scotland. Though not quite as scandalous as Paolo, who is here courting his brother’s […]

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