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A pure white veil represents the innocent; the title of the book alludes to the loss of innocence. Set in London and Hong-Kong in the 1920s. The book depicts the falling of a beautiful but shallow Kitti Fane. When Kitti's husband, a bacteriologist, discovers her affair with another man, he forces her to accompany him to Hong Kong, the heart of a cholera epidemic.

This edition (Classic Wisdom Reprint) is non-censored, based on a samizdat version and translated in Russia by an unknown translator. Widely held as one of the best novels of the 20th century the book depicts a story in a story, a manuscript of a Biblical story that the Master cannot publish and locked up in the asylum for. The story concerns a visit by the devil to the officially atheistic Soviet Union. The Master and Margarita combine supernatural elements with satirical dark comedy and Christian philosophy, defying a singular genre. Literary critic, assistant professor at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts Nadezhda Dozhdikova notes that the image of Jesus as a harmless madman presented in ″Master and Margarita″ has its source in the literature of the USSR of the 1920s, which, following the tradition of the demythologization of Jesus in the works Strauss, Renan, Nietzsche, and Binet-Sanglé, put forward two main themes - mental illness and deception. The mythological option, namely the denial of the existence of Jesus, only prevailed in the Soviet propaganda at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s.

Tsenzurirovannaya versiya byla opublikovana v moskovskom zhurnale v 1966-1967 gg. Posle smerti pisatelya. Rukopis' ne byla opublikovana v vide knigi do 1967 goda v Parizhe. Rasprostranena versiya samizdata, vklyuchayushchaya chasti, vyrezannyye ofitsial'noy tsenzuroy, i oni byli vklyucheny v versiyu 1969 goda, opublikovannuyu vo Frankfurte. S tekh por roman byl opublikovan na neskol'kikh yazykakh i v raznykh izdaniyakh. V otchayanii, ne v silakh opublikovat' Uchitelya i Margaritu, Bulgakov snachala napisal lichnoye pis'mo Iosifu Stalinu (iyul' 1929 goda), a zatem 28 marta 1930 goda pis'mo Sovetskomu pravitel'stvu. On zaprosil razresheniye na emigratsiyu, yesli Sovetskiy Soyuz ne smog nayti yemu primeneniye v kachestve pisatelya.

The Magic Mountain contains many contrasts and parallels with the earlier novel. Gustav von Aschenbach, an established author, is matched to a young, callow engineer at the start of a regular career. The erotic allure of the beautiful Polish boy Tadzio corresponds to the Asiatic-flabby ("asiatisch-schlaff") Russian Madame Chauchat. The setting was shifted both geographically and symbolically. The lowlands of the Italian coastlands are contrasted to an alpine resort famed for its health-giving properties.Mann describes the subjective experience of serious illness and the gradual process of medical institutionalization. He also alludes to the irrational forces within the human psyche, at a time when Freudian psychoanalysis was becoming a prominent type of treatment. These themes relate to the development of Castorp's character over the period covered by the novel. In his discussion of the work, written in English and published in The Atlantic in January 1953, Mann states that "what [Hans] came to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death to arrive at a higher sanity and health...".Mann acknowledged his debt to the skeptical insights of Friedrich Nietzsche concerning modern humanity, and he drew from these in creating conversations between the characters. Throughout the book, the author employs the discussions among Settembrini, Naphta, and the medical staff to introduce the young Castorp to a wide spectrum of competing ideologies about responses to the Age of Enlightenment. However, whereas the classical Bildungsroman would conclude by Castorp's having become a mature member of society, with his worldview and greater self-knowledge, The Magic Mountain ends with Castorp's becoming an anonymous conscript, one of millions, under fire on some battlefield of World War I.

Like many of Dostoevsky's stories, "White Nights" is told in the first person by a nameless narrator. The narrator is a young man living in Saint Petersburg who suffers from loneliness. He gets to know and falls in love with a young woman, but the love remains unrequited as the woman misses her lover, with whom she is finally reunited.

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy that he wrote early on in his career. It is about the love affair that develops between two young Italians who come from families that are at odds with each other. Shakespeare wrote one of his most well-known plays during his lifetime, and it is also one of the most frequently performed, even more so than Hamlet. In modern times, the characters in the title are considered to be the quintessential examples of young lovers.The story of Romeo and Juliet is part of a long-standing tradition of tragic romances that dates back to ancient times. The plot is based on an Italian story that was written by Matteo Bandello. In 1562, Arthur Brooke translated the story into verse and titled it The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet. In 1567, William Painter retold the story in prose and titled it The Palace of Pleasure. The plot was expanded by Shakespeare through the development of a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both of these but expanded the plot. It is suggested that the play was written between the years 1591 and 1595, and the quarto edition of the play was initially published in the year 1597. However, the text of the first quarto edition was of poor quality, and subsequent editions made corrections to the text to bring it closer to the original that Shakespeare had written.

Confessions is generally considered one of Augustine's most important texts. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written (Ovid had invented the genre at the start of the first century AD with his Tristia) and was an influential model for Christian writers throughout the Middle Ages. Henry Chadwick wrote that Confessions will "always rank among the great masterpieces of Western literature."The work is not a complete autobiography, as it was written during Augustine's early 40s, and he lived long afterward, producing another important work, The City of God. Nonetheless, it does provide an unbroken record of his development of thought and is the most complete record of any single person from the 4th and 5th centuries. It is a significant theological work, featuring spiritual meditations and insights.

In Walden, Thoreau describes his experiences over two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he constructed close to Walden Pond amid Ralph Waldo Emerson's property near Concord, Massachusetts.Thoreau makes precise scientific observations of nature as well as metaphorical and poetic uses of natural phenomena. He identifies many plants and animals by both their popular and scientific names, records in detail the color and clarity of different bodies of water, precisely dates and describes the freezing and thawing of the pond, and recounts his experiments to measure the depth and shape of the bottom of the supposedly "bottomless" Walden Pond.There has been much speculation as to why Thoreau went to live at the pond in the first place. E. B. White stated on this note, "Henry went forth to battle when he took to the woods, and Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives-the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight," while Leo Marx noted that Thoreau's stay at Walden Pond was an experiment based on his teacher Emerson's "method and of nature" and that it was a "report of an experiment in transcendental pastoralism."

Harold Bloom says Don Quixote is the first modern novel, and the protagonist is at odds with Freud's reality principle, which accepts the necessity of dying. Bloom says that the novel has an endless range of meanings, but that a recurring theme is the human need to withstand suffering. Although burlesque on the surface, the novel, especially in its second half, has served as an important thematic source not only in literature but also in much of art and music, inspiring works by Pablo Picasso and Richard Strauss. Ever since the book's publication, the tall, thin, fancy-struck, and idealistic Quixote has been contrasted with the fat, squat, world-weary Panza, with Don Quixote's imaginings serving as the butt of outrageous and cruel practical jokes in the novel. Sancho, faithful and simple, must deceive him at certain points. The novel is considered a satire of orthodoxy, veracity, and even nationalism. In exploring his characters' individualism, Cervantes helped lead literary practice beyond the narrow convention of chivalric romance. He spoofs the chivalric romance with a straightforward retelling of a series of acts that redound to the hero's knightly virtues. Don Quixote's character gained widespread fame during its time, leading to the rapid adoption of the word quixotic in many languages. Characters such as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote's steed, Rocinante, are emblems of Western literary culture. The origin of the term "tilting at windmills" to signify attacking imaginary foes or displaying extreme idealism can be traced back to a pivotal scene in the book.

Evelyn Waugh, an English author, first published his novel Decline and Fall in 1928. Decline and Fall was Waugh's first published novel; his previous attempt, The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed while still in manuscript form. Waugh's schooling at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College in Oxford, and experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales all play a role in Decline and Fall. It is a social satire that uses the author's distinctive black humor to mock various aspects of British society in the 1920s. The novel's title is a shortened version of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In addition, Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918-1922), which argued that the rise of nations and cultures is inevitably followed by their eclipse, also serves as an allusion in the novel's title.Waugh read Gibbon and Spengler while writing his debut novel. Waugh's satire is unmistakably hostile to much that was popular in the late 1920s, with "themes of cultural confusion, moral disorientation, and social bedlam...both drive the novel forward and fuel its humor." According to Waugh, the "undertow of moral seriousness provides a crucial tension within [Waugh's novels], but it does not dominate them."In his 'Author's Note' to the first edition, Waugh stated, 'Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY.'

Point Counter Point is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1928. It is Huxley's longest novel and was notably more complex and serious than his earlier fiction.Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. He began his career publishing poetry and short stories, and he edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry. Later, he published screenplays, travelogues, and satire. He spent most of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He received nine nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was named a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novels, Brave New World (1932) and Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is D. H. Lawrence's final novel, first published in 1928 in Italy and 1929 in France. Obscenity led to the book's outlawing in the United States, Canada, Australia, India, and Japan, but it entered the public domain in 2024. Lawrence's life, including his wife, Frieda, and childhood in Nottinghamshire, inspired the novel. Constance Reid (Lady Chatterley) is the central character of the novel. Her husband, Sir Clifford Chatterley, a baronet from the upper class, is paralyzed from the waist down due to a Great War injury. Constance is having an affair with Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper. Lawrence's opinions and artistic preferences earned him a controversial reputation; he endured contemporary persecution and public misrepresentation of his creative work throughout his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile that he described as a "savage enough pilgrimage.". At the time of his death, he had been variously scorned as tasteless, avant-garde, and a pornographer who had only garnered success for erotica; however, English novelist and critic E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation". Later, English literary critic F. R. Leavis also championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness.

In 1928, Jonathan Cape released Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness. The story follows Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family who suffers from sexual inversion at a young age. She falls in love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while working as an ambulance driver during WWI. Hall portrays social isolation and rejection as typical "invert" afflictions that mar their happiness together. Shortly after its publication, James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express, launched a campaign against the book. A British court deemed it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women." The book withstood legal challenges in New York State and the Customs Court in the United States. The legal battles surrounding The Well of Loneliness raised the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture. For decades, it was the most well-known lesbian novel in English, and for many young people, it was the first source of information about lesbianism.

Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published on October 11, 1928. Inspired by the tumultuous family history of the aristocratic poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West, Woolf's lover and close friend, it is arguably one of her most famous novels. Orlando is a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history. Considered a feminist classic, the book has been extensively written about by scholars of women's writing and gender and transgender studies.The novel has been adapted several times. In 1981, Ulrike Ottinger adapted it for her film Freak Orlando, with Magdalena Montezuma in the title role. In 1989, director Robert Wilson and writer Darryl Pinckney collaborated on a single-actor theatrical production.Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight that included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. She was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature from a young age. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London, where she studied classics and history and came into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement.

The incidents described in the stories are modeled on Maugham's experiences as a secret agent, and "the central character, Ashenden, is very much an autobiographical character." He is supposed to have modeled Chandra Lal after Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, an Indian nationalist in Germany during the war. Maugham, who was in the British Secret Service in Europe during the war, based many of his stories on his own experiences. Among other enterprises, Britain's European intelligence network attempted to eliminate several Indian nationalists in Europe, notably members of the Berlin Committee. Donald Gullick, a British agent, was dispatched to assassinate Chattopadhyaya. At the same time, the latter was on his way to Geneva to meet another Indian nationalist, Mahendra Pratap, and forward the Kaiser's invitation to Berlin. The short story of Giulia Lazzari is a blend of Gullick's attempts to assassinate Chattopadhyaya and Mata Hari's story. Winston Churchill reportedly advised Maugham to burn 14 other stories.The 1936 Alfred Hitchcock-directed film Secret Agent is a loose adaptation of "The Traitor" and "The Hairless Mexican," with John Gielgud as Ashenden (whose "real" name is Edgar Brodie) and Peter Lorre as The General.

Scarlet Sister Mary is a 1928 novel by Julia Peterkin. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1929. The book was called obscene and banned at the Gaffney, South Carolina public library. The Gaffney Ledger newspaper, however, serially published the complete book. Scarlet Sister Mary is set among the Gullah people of the Low Country in South Carolina. The date is never established, but it appears to be around the beginning of the 20th century. The title character, Mary, was an orphan on an abandoned plantation who was raised by Auntie Maum Hannah and her crippled son Budda Ben. The description of Mary as "Scarlet Sister" reflects the basic conflict in the novel as Mary is torn between her desire to be a member of good standing in the church and a desire to live a life of sin and pleasure.Julia began writing short stories inspired by the everyday life and management of the plantation. She was described as audacious as well as gracious by Robeson (1995). Peterkin sent highly assertive letters to people she did not know and had never met. For example, she wrote to authors Carl Sandburg and H. L. Mencken, and included samples of her writing about the Gullah culture of coastal South Carolina. Living chiefly on the plantation, she invited Sandburg, Mencken, and other prominent people to the plantation. Sandburg, who lived within a day's travel time in Flat Rock, North Carolina, visited. Although Mencken did not visit, he became Peterkin's literary agent in her early career, a possible testament to her persuasive letters. Eventually, Mencken led her to Alfred Knopf, who published Green Thursday, her first book, in 1924.In addition to a number of subsequent novels, her short stories were published in magazines and newspapers throughout her career. Peterkin was among the few white authors to specialize in the African-American experience.

In four sections, Gulliver's Travels, also known as Journeys into Several Remote Nations of the World, Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that satirizes human nature and the "travelers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best-known full-length work and an English literature classic. Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex rather than divert the world." The book was an instant success. "It is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery," English dramatist John Gay said. In 2015, Robert McCrum released his list of the 100 best novels of all time, calling Gulliver's Travels a "satirical masterpiece." The journey begins with a brief preamble in which Lemuel Gulliver describes his life and history before his voyages. Gulliver is washed ashore after a shipwreck on his first voyage and becomes a prisoner of a race of tiny people, less than 6 inches (15 cm) tall, who live on the island country of Lilliput. On October 28, 1726, the first edition was published in two volumes for 8s. 6d. Motte published Gulliver's Travels anonymously, and several sequels (Memoirs of the Court of Lilliput...), parodies (Two Lilliputian Odes, The First on the Famous Engine With Which Captain Gulliver Extinguished the Palace Fire...), and "keys" (Gulliver Decipher'd and Lemuel Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World Compendiously Method) were mostly published anonymously (or pseudonymously) and quickly forgotten. Swift had nothing to do with them and renounced them in Faulkner's 1735 edition. Swift's friend Alexander Pope wrote five verses on Gulliver's Travels that Swift liked so much that he included them in the book's second edition, though they are rarely included. In 1735, an Irish publisher named George Faulkner published a collection of Swift's works, Volume III, including Gulliver's Travels.

On the City of God Against the Pagans (Latin: De civitate Dei contra paganos), often called The City of God, is a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century AD. The book was in response to allegations that Christianity brought about the decline of Rome and is considered one of Augustine's most important works, standing alongside The Confessions, The Enchiridion, On Christian Doctrine, and On the Trinity. As a work of one of the most influential Church Fathers, The City of God is a cornerstone of Western thought, expounding on many questions of theology, such as the suffering of the righteous, the existence of evil, the conflict between free will and divine omniscience, and the doctrine of original sin.The book presents human history as a conflict between what Augustine calls the Earthly City (often colloquially referred to as the City of Man, but never by Augustine) and the City of God, a conflict that is destined to end in victory for the latter. The City of God is marked by people who forgo earthly pleasure to dedicate themselves to the eternal truths of God, now revealed fully in the Christian faith. The Earthly City, on the other hand, consists of people who have immersed themselves in the cares and pleasures of the present, passing world.This concept of world history guided by Divine Providence in a universal war between God and the Devil is part of the official doctrine of the Catholic Church as most recently stated in the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes document: "The Church ... holds that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point and the goal of man, as well as of all human history ... all of human life, whether individual or collective, shows itself to be a dramatic struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness ... The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart, and the answer to all its yearnings."

According to the evolutionary outlines of history proposed by Wells and others, humankind is simply another animal, and Jesus was a remarkable human being and nothing more. Chesterton's thesis, as expressed in Part I of the book ('On the Creature Called Man'), is that if a man is really and dispassionately viewed as another animal, one must conclude that he is a bizarrely unusual animal.C. S. Lewis credited The Everlasting Man with "baptizing" his intellect, much as George MacDonald's writings had baptized his imagination to make him more than half-converted well before he could bring himself to Christianity. In a 1950 letter to Sheldon Vanauken, Lewis calls the book "the best popular apologetic I know." In 1947, he wrote to Rhonda Bodle: "the [very] best popular defense of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man." The book was also cited by The Christian Century in a list of 10 books that "most shaped [Lewis'] vocational attitude and philosophy of life."Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays (mostly newspaper columns), and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer.

Anne of the Island is the third book in the Anne of Green Gables series, written by Lucy Maud Montgomery about Anne Shirley. Anne Of the Island is the third book of the eight-book sequels written by L. M. Montgomery about Anne Shirley and her friends. In the book, Anne leaves Green Gables for the first time to go to Redmond College to get a bachelor's degree in art at 18.Anne's growth is reflected in the book's title. She recognizes Prince Edward Island as her true home when studying away from the Island, particularly when visiting the site where she was born. She has repeatedly stated that she is not a "Bluenose," as individuals born in Nova Scotia are known and that she is a true Islander.Anne of the Island was published in 1915, seven years after the bestselling Anne of Green Gables. In the continuing story of Anne Shirley, Anne attends Redmond College in Kingsport, where she is studying for her BA.L. M. Montgomery was a Canadian author best known for a collection of novels, essays, short stories, and poetry beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. She published 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems, and 30 essays. Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success; the title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.

Despite the dependence on earlier writers, Institutes was felt by many to be a new voice, and within a year there was demand for a second edition. This came in 1539, amplifying especially the treatment of the fall of man, of election, and of reprobation, as well as that of the authority of scripture. It showed also a more conciliatory temper toward Luther in the section on the Lord's Supper.The opening chapter of the Institutes is perhaps the best known, in which Calvin presents the basic plan of the book. There are two general subjects to be examined: the creator and his creatures. Above all, the book concerns the knowledge of God the Creator, but "as it is in the creation of man that the divine perfections are best displayed", there is also an examination of what can be known about humankind. After all, it is mankind's knowledge of God and of what He requires of his creatures that is the primary issue of concern for a book of theology. In the first chapter, these two issues are considered together to show what God has to do with mankind (and other creatures) and, especially, how knowing God is connected with human knowledge.The Book overshadowed the earlier Protestant theologies such as Melanchthon's Loci Communes and Zwingli's Commentary on the True and False Religion. According to historian Philip Schaff, it is a classic of theology at the level of Origen's On First Principles, Augustine's The City of God, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, and Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith. (Schaff himself was an adherent of Reformed Christianity, which traces its roots to John Calvin.)

Despite the dependence on earlier writers, Institutes was felt by many to be a new voice, and within a year there was demand for a second edition. This came in 1539, amplifying especially the treatment of the fall of man, of election, and of reprobation, as well as that of the authority of scripture. It showed also a more conciliatory temper toward Luther in the section on the Lord's Supper.The opening chapter of the Institutes is perhaps the best known, in which Calvin presents the basic plan of the book. There are two general subjects to be examined: the creator and his creatures. Above all, the book concerns the knowledge of God the Creator, but "as it is in the creation of man that the divine perfections are best displayed", there is also an examination of what can be known about humankind. After all, it is mankind's knowledge of God and of what He requires of his creatures that is the primary issue of concern for a book of theology. In the first chapter, these two issues are considered together to show what God has to do with mankind (and other creatures) and, especially, how knowing God is connected with human knowledge.The Book overshadowed the earlier Protestant theologies such as Melanchthon's Loci Communes and Zwingli's Commentary on the True and False Religion. According to historian Philip Schaff, it is a classic of theology at the level of Origen's On First Principles, Augustine's The City of God, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, and Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith. (Schaff himself was an adherent of Reformed Christianity, which traces its roots to John Calvin.)

These Old Shades was itself originally intended to be a sequel to Heyer's first novel The Black Moth, which would redeem the devilish Belmanoir. But as The Black Moth was a melodrama and a sequel per se would not work in with the plot, she decided to make the new novel stand-alone, renamed many characters, and made them 'shades' of their former selves for These Old Shades.The title is taken from Austin Dobson's epilogue poem to his collection of essays Eighteenth Century Vignettes.The novel was an instant success and established the author as a writer.Heyer essentially established the historical romance genre and its subgenre Regency romance. Her Regencies were inspired by Jane Austen. To ensure accuracy, Heyer collected reference works and kept detailed notes on all aspects of Regency life. Whilst some critics thought the novels were too detailed, others considered the level of detail to be Heyer's greatest asset. Her meticulous nature was also evident in her historical novels; Heyer even recreated William the Conqueror's crossing into England for her novel The Conqueror.Beginning in 1932 Heyer released one romance novel and one thriller each year. Her husband often provided basic outlines for the plots of her thrillers, leaving Heyer to develop character relationships and dialogue so as to bring the story to life. Although many critics describe Heyer's detective novels as unoriginal, others such as Nancy Wingate praise them "for their wit and comedy as well as for their well-woven plots".