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This 1871 revision of The Psalms by the American Bible Union is based on the “Common Version”, another name for the 1833 revision of the King James Version of The Bible by Noah Webster.

Mike’s dream of studying and playing cricket at Cambridge are thwarted as his father runs into financial difficulties. Instead, Mike takes on the job of clerk at the “New Asiatic Bank.” Luckily, school friend Psmith, with his boundless optimism and original views, soon joins his department, and together they endeavour to make the best of their new life in London.

The transitioning years between girlhood and womanhood are an exciting time for a girl, as well as tumultuous and confusing. Beautiful Girlhood by Mabel Hale is a lovely guide that will help the young girl understand the changes she is going through emotionally and physically and also guide her in the proper behavior befitting a young woman.

Charles Spurgeon was a popular Baptist minister in London in mid-Victorian times; his ministry was highly influential and had a significant effect on many families in London and further afield. It was difficult to find a hall large enough to accommodate the crowd who wished to hear him. At times the Royal Surrey Gardens’ Music Hall was hired to accomodate the Sunday congregation; this could seat 10,000 but large numbers were unable to gain admittance. His world-wide heritage is very much wit ...

Robinson Crusoe is perhaps the most famous castaway of all time. Whilst many of us have not read Defoe’s iconic book, Robinson Crusoe is a character that is familiar to us all. Aided by the hundreds of movies and theatre productions that the book spurned, Crusoe is a household name. Credited with being the first "real fiction" book, this fictional autobiography tells the tale of a young man who found himself shipwrecked on a remote island for 28 years. The story is said to be based on the dr ...

Cædmon was an Anglo-Saxon herdsman attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch (657–681). Originally ignorant of the art of song, Cædmon learned to compose one night in the course of a dream. Cædmon’s only known surviving work is Cædmon’s Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of the Christian god he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is one of three candidates for the earliest ...

The Rhetoric was developed by Aristotle during two periods when he was in Athens, the first between 367 to 347 BCE (when he was seconded to Plato in the Academy), and the second between 335 to 322 BCE (when he was running his own school, the Lyceum). The Rhetoric consists of three books. Book I offers a general overview, presenting the purposes of rhetoric and a working definition; it also offers a detailed discussion of the major contexts and types of rhetoric. Book II discusses in detail t ...

The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk is another in the long list children’s books by the conservationist, Thornton W. Burgess. In this book, Jimmy Skunk has encounters with Reddy Fox, Peter Rabbit, Unc’ Billy Possum and other acquaintances of his in the Green Meadows and Green Forest. Along the way, we learn some of the habits of Jimmy and his friends and we learn little lessons about life such as the importance of always keeping one’s temper, keeping promises and not playing practical jokes. We ar ...

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion is a wide-ranging comparative study of mythology and religion, written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). It offered a modernist approach, discussing religion dispassionately as a cultural phenomenon, rather than from a theological perspective. Although most of its theories have subsequently been exploded (the most famous one being that of the relationship between magic, religion and science), its impact on contempo ...

The title 'Anthem' is derived as an anthem to sense of self and self-governing thoughts. Anthem is a story of Equality 7-2521 who is a young man living in some unspecified future time and place. In this future era freedom and individual rights have been eradicated. The starring character of the novel is an inquisitive street cleaner. He lives in a society where people have lost their knowledge of individualism, to the extreme that people do not know words like 'I' or 'mine'. All the people l ...

Nat Love was born a slave, emancipated into abject poverty, grew up riding the range as a cowboy and spent his maturity riding the rails as a Pullman Porter. For me, the most amazing thing about him is that despite the circumstances of his life, which included being owned like a farm animal solely because of the color of his skin and spending later decades living and working as an equal with white coworkers, he was an unrepentant racist! Convinced that the only good Indian was a dead one, an ...

A selection of twenty hymns sung in this recording.

A collection of romantic poems for St Valentine’s day.

Dracula tells the tale of a sinister Transylvanian aristocrat who seeks to retain his youth and strength by feeding off human blood. The author, Bram Stoker, a young Victorian theater professional, was probably inspired by the strange epidemic of vampirism that occurred in remote parts of Eastern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. These stories were recounted by travelers who later arrived in England and other parts of Western Europe. Stoker initially meant the tale to be written as a pl ...

A social satire, Main Street became a best-seller soon after its publication, fascinating readers with its biting humor and realistic portrayal of small-town communities. Published in 1920, the novel follows Carol Milford as she moves to a conventional small town, where she encounters its conceited residents characterized by their ignorance, hypocrisy, and smugness, while simultaneously being the target of their careless ridicule. Furthermore, the novel efficiently exemplifies the dividing l ...

In honor of Kristin and Corey’s wedding (April 2006) we’ve recorded a selection of wedding-themed poems. Congratulations, you two!

Another delightful and sharply pointed excursion into the topics of the day, and of this day as well, with Gilbert Keith Chesterton. These reprinted magazine articles are filled with his good natured wit, his masterful use of paradox, and devastating ability to use reductio ad absurdum to destroy the popular myths that drive a society driving full-speed into secular humanism. You will come away with a whole new collection of wonderful quotes. (Ray Clare)

First collection of sung and spoken folk ballads (13 in collection).

A heartwarming collection of nursery rhymes that will take you back to your childhood!

In this celebration of diversity, learn about the myriad histories and cultures behind our volunteers.

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor and philosopher who wrote Meditations; insights which were considered to give the meaning of life. The book was not written with the intent to be published. It offers a noteworthy chain of challenging situations which are a reflection on spirituality and enumerate the struggle to understand oneself and one's role in the universe. Written in the style of a journal, Meditations emphasizes that life in this world is short. Aurelius was a stoic philosopher who ...

This is a story of a wild horse who many said could not be caught or broken, and the man who set out to prove them wrong.

Short Poetry Collection 001: a collection of 29 public-domain poems.

Cattle Brands is a collection of 14 entertaining short stories depicting not only the life of cowboys in the wild, wild West, but also the harrowing skirmishes with banditos, thrilling shoot-outs, attempt at and the recapture of stolen chattel from fierce desperados, and much, much more exciting accounts that make one think it all actually happened.

A collection of ten short essays or other short nonfiction works in the public domain.

Diese Sammlung umfasst jede Art von deutschsprachigen Texten aller Genres, egal ob Fiktion, Non-Fiktion oder Lyrik.

A classic locked room mystery, in a not-so-classic setting. (Intro by Karen Savage)

Though Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his detective stories, he also wrote other short stories which are masterpieces of mystery and suspense. In some of the stories in “Tales of Terror and Mystery”, a suppressed uneasiness gradually builds up and evolves into sheer terror. In others, the story line unexpectedly changes and comes to a horrific conclusion. Sit back in the comfort of your armchair and let yourself be transported to the strange but compelling world created by Sir Arth ...

Here are 37 distinctively American poems, covering the mid-17th – early 20th Centuries, from Anne Bradstreet to Dorothy Parker’s sole PD work.

Long Poems Collection 1: a collection of 5 public-domain poems longer than 5 minutes in length.

Wharton's classic story of an aging (by Victorian-era standards) spinster socialite who would rather marry for money than for true love.

A story for children about a little bear with no name, “there were not enough names to go round,” and his adventures in finding one.

Aristotle’s Poetics from the 4th century B.C. aims to give a short study of storytelling. It discusses things like unity of plot, reversal of situation, and character in the context of Greek tragedy, comedy and epic poetry. But it still applies today. It is especially popular with screenwriters as seen in many script gurus’ how-to books.

Two men visting the US from London meet a pair of charming women who return the visit the following year in London. Romantic intrigues, miscommunication and cultural faux pas abound in this short but delightful novel.

A book that won the Newberry Prize in 1921 for an Outstanding Contribution in Children's Literature, The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon is indeed a classic that has been enjoyed by generations of children and adults. The book is an engagingly written work, dedicated to the author Hendrik van Loon's two young son's Hansje and Willem. It was created to convey the history of the human race to young people in a way that was interesting, memorable and would spur them onto further research ...

A quiet cathedral town in England, full of gossips and people who are not quite who they seem to be, is the setting for this murder mystery.

Leander Stillwell was an 18-year-old Illinois farm boy, living with his family in a log cabin, when the U.S. Civil War broke out. Stillwell felt a duty “to help save the Nation;” but, as with many other young men, his Patriotism was tinged with bravura: “the idea of staying at home and turning over senseless clods on the farm with the cannon thundering so close at hand . . . was simply intolerable.” Stillwell volunteered for the 61st Illinois Infantry in January 1861. His youthful enthusiasm ...

Text of famous inspirational lecture and biography of Russell Conwell, a Baptist minister and Temple University Founder

This is a sequel of sorts to 37 American Poems, one of my first solos. Concentration here is on late 19th to early 20th Century works by US poets.

A selection of Beethoven’s letters from the compilation by Dr. Ludwig Nohl and translated by Lady Grace Wallace.

Effi Briest ist die Titelfigur des gleichnamigen Romans von Theodor Fontane, der in Buchform erstmals 1895 erschienen ist. Als Erscheinungsjahr wurde auf dem Titelblatt 1896 angegeben.Der Gesellschaftsroman wird dem bürgerlichen Realismus zugeordnet und spielt vor dem Hintergrund des durch strenge Normen festgelegten Lebens im Kaiserreich unter Reichskanzler Otto von Bismarck. Der Roman beruht auf einer wahren Begebenheit, der Ehebruchgeschichte der Freifrau Elisabeth von Ardenne, geboren 1853.

In Plato’s Ion, Socrates questions Ion on whether he should really claim laud and glory for his ‘rhapsodic’ recitals of Homer’s poetry.

Boyhood is the second in Tolstoy's trilogy of three autobiographical novels, including Childhood and Youth, published in a literary journal during the 1850s. (Introduction by Bill Boerst)

A guide to different kinds of dreams, their meanings, and how they influence our waking lives.

A “Bluebeard” story in which a young woman marries a man whom she discovers has killed his previous wives and is trying to kill her as well.

Harry Houdini, master illusionist and contortionist, unmasks the various ways that criminals take advantage of their victims.

Cranford is the best-known novel of the 19th century English writer Elizabeth Gaskell. It was first published in 1851 as a serial in the magazine Household Words, which was edited by Charles Dickens.

Bed Time Stories is a collection of 14 short stories especially for young children.

A collection of short stories by author Jack London