Way Down East - by Joseph Rhode Grismer

Way Down East: A Romance of New England Life by Joseph Rhode Grismer 

 (US Edition) (UK Edition)

This book may be the first movie tie-in. Originally published as a novel in 1900, this 1920 edition is based on a later play and the blockbuster D.W. Griffith movie starring Lillian Gish.  (There are links to illustrations, but they are missing.  However, you can find and watch the film online.)  It is considered to be Ms. Gish's finest film and she was one of the greatest screen actresses of the silent era.

So what about this book?  It starts out as a promising enough romance:

It was at Mrs. Tremont's that she had met Lennox Sanderson, and from the first, both seemed to be under the influence of some subtle spell that drew them together blindly, and without the consent of their wills. Mrs. Tremont, who viewed the growing attraction of these two young people with well-concealed alarm, watched every opportunity to prevent their enjoying each other's society. It irritated her that one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Harvard should take such a fancy to her penniless young relative, instead of to Grace Tremont, whom she had selected for his wife.

There were few things that Mrs. Tremont enjoyed so much as arranging romances in everyday life.

But the next chapter is titled, "MOCK MARRIAGE."  Oh, trouble . . .

"Anything to please my husband," she answered with a flitting blush. "Your husband? Ah, say it again; it sounds awfully good from you." "So you don't really care for any more coffee, but just want to see my hands among the cups. How appreciative you are!" And there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she began with great elaboration the pantomimic representation of pouring a cup of coffee, adding sugar and cream; and concluded by handing the empty cup to Sanderson. "It would be such a pity to waste the coffee, Lennie, when you only wanted to see my hands."

"If I am not going to have the coffee, I insist on both the hands," he said, taking them and kissing them repeatedly.

Cad!

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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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Eothen - by Alexander William Kinglake

Eothen, or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East by Alexander William Kinglake.

(US Edition) (UK Edition)  

Published in 1844, it is one of the finest examples of travel literature, a genre I love and am well read in; although I have not read very many books from the 1800’s. But I did read and love this book.  It is a marvel.  I have only to show you the beginning and you will know if you are the reader for this book:

At Semlin I still was encompassed by the scenes and the sounds of familiar life; the din of a busy world still vexed and cheered me; the unveiled faces of women still shone in the light of day. Yet, whenever I chose to look southward, I saw the Ottoman’s fortress - austere, and darkly impending high over the vale of the Danube - historic Belgrade. I had come, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and havoc of the East.

The two frontier towns are less than a cannon-shot distant, and yet their people hold no communion. The Hungarian on the north, and the Turk and Servian on the southern side of the Save are as much asunder as though there were fifty broad provinces that lay in the path between them. Of the men that bustled around me in the streets of Semlin there was not, perhaps, one who had ever gone down to look upon the stranger race dwelling under the walls of that opposite castle. It is the plague, and the dread of the plague, that divide the one people from the other. All coming and going stands forbidden by the terrors of the yellow flag. If you dare to break the laws of the quarantine, you will be tried with military haste; the court will scream out your sentence to you from a tribunal some fifty yards off; the priest, instead of gently whispering to you the sweet hopes of religion, will console you at duelling distance; and after that you will find yourself carefully shot, and carelessly buried in the ground of the lazaretto.

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. 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.