Eminent Victorians - by Lytton Strachey

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

"Eminent Victorians" by Lytton Strachey is a 1918 book that remains one of the best examples of biography ever written.  (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  The beginning is ironic to us today, "The history of the Victorian Age will never be written; we know too much about it."  Not anymore!  But Strachey knew his subjects very well.  He writes about four eminent Victorians,  Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and    General Gordon.

Everyone knows the popular conception of Florence Nightingale. The saintly, self-sacrificing woman, the delicate maiden of high degree who threw aside the pleasures of a life of ease to succour the afflicted; the Lady with the Lamp, gliding through the horrors of the hospital at Scutari, and consecrating with the radiance of her goodness the dying soldier's couch. The vision is familiar to all— but the truth was different.

Do tell!

A Demon possessed her. Now demons, whatever else they may be, are full of interest. And so it happens that in the real Miss Nightingale there was more that was interesting than in the legendary one; there was also less that was agreeable.

Written in a breezy, enjoyable and factual style, this book is as appealing to us (I read it in college) as it was to the Edwardians.  

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com

On the Decay of the Art of Lying - by Mark Twain

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

I would guess the American write Mark Twain needs no introduction.  I have blogged before on a few of his more popular works.  This is a bit of a departure for the blog, it is an 1885 essay, "On the Decay of the Art of Lying." (US Edition)  (UK Edition)  Kindle has created a platform for novellas and short stories just as they were close to extinction!  I don't know if even Kindle can save the essay, but let's see . . .

This essay was first delivered as a speech.  Twain is not saying that lying is dead, but rather that the art of lying is a . . . well . . . dying art.

Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb: Children and fools _always_ speak the truth. The deduction is plain --adults and wise persons _never_ speak it.

A little bit of eccentric formatting with that underlining, but it is easy to overlook.  It may be because these passages have been underlined as favorites by readers.  

Of course there are people who _think_ they never lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the very things that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies--every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception--and purposely. Even in sermons--but that is a platitude.

Twain is sardonic. One of the reader reviews says:  

"Once again, Mark Twin is the master of essays, this time about lying. It's done in an over the top fashion, making you realize that we're all liars on a daily basis, and we do it reflexively but that it's a dying art. Twain argues that we don't lie for the right reasons, and we need to address that. The essay is a bit short but still poignant even today..."

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com

Night and Day - by Virginia Woolf

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

English writer Virginia Woolf is one of the most important writers of her generation.   She is by no means forgotten and all of her books are read and studied and some have been adapted for other media.  Woolf still speaks to us.  However, only her early books are out of copyright and free for Kindle.

Let's take a look at Night and Day, a 1919 novel. (US Edition)  (UK Edition) 

It was a Sunday evening in October, and in common with many other young ladies of her class, Katharine Hilbery was pouring out tea. Perhaps a fifth part of her mind was thus occupied, and the remaining parts leapt over the little barrier of day which interposed between Monday morning and this rather subdued moment, and played with the things one does voluntarily and normally in the daylight.

Women have always multi-tasked!

. . . Katharine was committed to giving her parents an account of her visit to the Suffrage office. 

"They have an office at the top of one of the old houses in Russell Square. I never saw such queer-looking people. And the man discovered I was related to the poet, and talked to me about poetry. Even Mary Datchet seems different in that atmosphere." 

"Yes, the office atmosphere is very bad for the soul," said Mr. Hilbery.

Sad to think there was a time when Virginia Woolf was not allowed to vote . . . Actually women in the States could not vote at the time my mother was born and I also find it odd to think her strong-willed mother not being allowed to vote.  My mother is 97 and has never missed her chance to vote.  And neither have I.  We remember.  So pick up this book and read about a time when some of us could not take voting for granted . . .

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

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For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Here is a video of my mother, at 97, a new convert to the Kindle!

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com

Travels in Arabia - by Johann Ludwig Burckhardt

Free US/UK Kindle Classic

This travel book seems to have several title variations, but I am settling on Travels in Arabia; comprehending an account of those territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans regard as sacred. (US Edition)  (UK Edition)   

It is by a Swiss adventurer named Johann Ludwig Burckhardt who knew Arabic and traveled disguised as an Arab.  (He should not be confused with English writer Charles Montagu Doughty who wrote a travel book with a similar title.)  This is a book put together from Burckhardt's letters and papers home and published posthumously in 1829. Now armchair traveler, you can rediscover it!

Here is a caveat.  You have to page through tedious notes on the assembling and publication of the book before you finally come to the book.  Then you will find the original page numbers are inserted in brackets for some reason beyond my understanding and each time that causes a paragraph to appear even in the middle of a sentence!  You will notice that in the excerpt below.  It is OK, you get used to it . . .

The price of every thing had risen here to an unusual height, the imports from the interior of Arabia having entirely ceased, while the whole population of the Hedjaz, now increased by a Turkish army and its numerous followers, and a host of pilgrims who were daily coming in, wholly depended for its supply upon the imports from Egypt. My little stock of money was therefore spent during my illness, and before I was sufficiently recovered to walk out. The Greek captain, though he had shown himself ready to afford me the common services of humanity, was not disposed to trust to the

[p.3] honour or respectability of a man whom he knew to be entirely destitute of money.

This privation causes him to sell his slave and travel in the guise of a "reduced Egyptian gentleman."

He went on the Hadj and there is some question as to whether he converted to Islam.

I have heard people exclaim in the mosques at Mekka, immediately after prayers, “O brethren, O faithful, hear me! I ask twenty dollars from God, to pay for my passage home; twenty dollars only. You know that God is all- bountiful, and may send me a hundred dollars; but it is twenty dollars only that I ask. Remember that charity is the sure road to paradise.” There can be no doubt that this practice is sometimes attended with success.

Quite a find, such an early travelers tale from an area much in the news today.  Any understanding we can gather of people elsewhere helps us understand our own selves better.  I have turned on the television and heard preachers instructing their electronic flock to pray exactly as is quoted above.

This blog is a guide to the best free and inexpensive classic literature for the US & UK Kindle. If you enjoy my suggestions, please tell your friends who read to give my blog a try. 

Join me on Twitter, FaceBook, or Pinterest.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

For a nominal fee of 99 cents/pence, you can subscribe to this blog and have it automatically download on your Kindle. (It is one of the top 100 blogs on Amazon.)This gives you the convenience of being able to download the books directly to your Kindle, instead of downloading them to your computer and then transferring them to your Kindle. It also helps support my blog.

UK readers may go to this Amazon link to subscribe.  (Slightly more than half my readers are from the UK)

US readers may go to this Amazon link

Thank to all my readers, whether you subscribe on your Kindle or whether you read it online.  I love to get good reviews!  Who wouldn't?  Should you care to leave a review, follow these links for UK readers or US readers. You may e-mail me at marilyn@marilynlitt.com